The Australian Women's Register

Helen Waldsax was born in 1915 in Kadina, South Australia, to judge Sir Herbert Kingsley Paine and his wife Amy. Helen completed tertiary studies at the University of Adelaide, graduating with a history degree in 1938, followed by a Diploma of Social Science in 1939. She went on to receive training as an almoner at the Victorian Institute of Hospital Almoners in 1940, and was appointed as a social worker for the Family Welfare Bureau in Adelaide, where she worked for two years.

Helen later joined the Red Cross and in 1944 she was sent to the United Kingdom as a social health worker. Helen married her husband Reinhard Waldsax in 1945 and the pair settled in Watford. She became a British citizen in August 1945.

As an advocate for women and women’s issues, Helen Waldsax was president of the National Council of Women of Great Britain for two years, from 1976.