It was in 1953 that Patrick Laurance found himself unemployed, supporting his wife, Joan, and a young daughter with chronic bronchitis, and mourning the death of another child. In a small act of kindness which was to bear remarkable fruit, a friend offered the family the loan of his flat in Westcliff-on-sea, Essex, for a week while he was on holiday, provided they fed the cat. The family returned from this short break energised, relaxed, optimistic and with their child's health visibly improved.

They never forgot that week, and 22 years later the couple decided to found the Family Holiday Association and send other stressed families on simple holidays. The charity, which began at their kitchen table and with many days of private fundraising, was quite a revolutionary idea in 1975. “Social Services,” Laurance once said, “arrange useful things like washing-machines and benefits. But what a lot of people really need is a holiday by the sea.”

Today the charity sends 1,600 seriously disadvantaged families on short therapeutic breaks by the British seaside every year, often with remarkable results on morale, prospects and family happiness.

Patrick Laurance was born in 1919 in Southend-on-Sea. His father, a lawyer, died when he was 6. The following year he was sent to boarding school. Money for university was lacking, so he was apprenticed in the cutting room of a Parisian fashion house, where he became fluent in French. Joining the Army in 1939 he served in North Africa and Italy with the Royal Army Service Corps, was promoted to captain and mentioned in dispatches. He claimed that this was for playing bridge with his commanding officer, but is credited with maintaining his men's morale. As an Arabic speaker he served with Montgomery's 8th Army, and related his toughest assignment as having to requisition 500 donkeys from the local population.

In 1946 he married Joan Hart, who was his partner for 62 years until his death, and co-founder of the charity. After the war he worked as a sales manager and sales director, with the short period of unemployment that brought the greatest achievement of his life, the idea for the Family Holiday Association. They began with appeals to friends for £50 a time; they sent 17 families on holiday the next year. As the charity developed and achieved national publicity for its originality, it forged sophisticated links with Social Services and other charities and its work grew year on year, often providing the only relief for families stressed by illness, disaster or chronic deprivation. The principle remained steadfast: that families should go away together in Britain. Their fundraising was energetic and personal; in early years they set up a stand selling Christmas cards in the Trocadero Centre at Piccadilly, manning it themselves. By the 1980s they had to employ full-time staff.

As the charity developed and they aged, the couple remained trustees but ceded control to a professional director; it was not always easy for the simple-hearted founders to watch the charity modernise and extend its remit into campaigning and research on the benefits of holidays. They had pride, though, in its expansion and continued their personal fundraising for it in North London.

In his later years Laurance maintained his interest in cricket, tennis and table tennis, and only in the last years reluctantly gave up refereeing youth football. As a former Conservative councillor he kept a vigilant eye on local politics, and did volunteer work for several bodies including Dignity in Dying and hospitals. In the old people's club he ran, most of the members were younger than him.

He had a heart condition that he ignored, and in the week preceding his death worked tirelessly for Dignity in Dying, visited patients at the hospital and ran the pensioners' club.

He is survived by his wife, Joan, and their two daughters.

Patrick Laurance, co-founder of the Family Holiday Association, was born on December 24, 1919. He died on January 11, 2008, aged 88