SHE was mum to more than 120 children.
And she won a national award for her work with youngsters over many years.
Mrs Joan Singleton, of Golcar, who died at the age of 79, was a woman in a million.
She was a foster mum for more than 21 years and in that time looked after 119 children - having already brought up three of her own.
Mrs Singleton, formerly of Moorcroft Avenue, died at the Cleveland House Nursing Home where she had lived for six months.
Mrs Singleton first registered as a foster parent in 1971 with the old Huddersfield Borough Council.
To achieve registration, she had to get the approval of all her family, which scuppered her plan to start fostering as a surprise.
But her children relished the idea and got used to the idea of their family home being filled with the sound and paraphernalia of babies and young children.
She confessed years later that she fell in love with every one of the babies that passed through her hands.
"I say that if you don't get attached to them, you haven't done your job right. I don't look upon them as someone else's children, they are looked after as one of the family."
The hard work put in over the years earned Mrs Singleton a Radio Times Heart of Gold in 1993 - an accolade she described as coming out of the blue.
Mrs Singleton was the former manager of a drapery shop in Golcar before taking up her fostering career.
She was a widow, having lost her husband Reggie some time ago.
She left three children, Roger, Nigel and Pauline, six grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
The funeral service is on Thursday, March 30, at 12noon at Huddersfield Crematorium.
