Helen Brook

When Helen Brook started working as a volunteer in family planning clinics in the Fifties, it was illegal to provide contraception to unmarried couples. Aware of the suffering this caused through unwanted pregnancies, and unafraid of controversy, Helen became committed to improving access to contraception for the young and vulnerable. Later, as director of the Marie Stopes clinic in London, Helen opened a special session for unmarried women that became so popular, young women travelled from all over the UK to attend. Its success persuaded Helen that a separate charity was needed to cope with demand.

Supported by a donation from a banker, John Trusted, Helen founded the Brook Advisory Centres as a charity dedicated to providing contraception and practical advice to young, unmarried women. The first clinic opened in July 1964 and over 500 young women visited in its first year. Over the next forty years, with funding from the public and private sectors and from charitable trusts, new Brook Advisory Centres opened across the UK. Helen Brook was involved with the charity she founded until well into her eighties and was awarded a CBE in 1995, two years before her death aged 89. Brook now has 17 Centres as far apart as Inverness and Jersey and runs sessions in over 40 locations.  Since it was founded in 1964, over 1.4 million young people have visited Brook for advice or contraception and with almost 100,000 young people visiting Brook Centres every year, Helen Brook’s legacy continues.