David Lackner-Smith, Founder, Director & Ambassador, The Sanctuary Trust
Over the last fiscal year (2024-2025), The Sanctuary Trust has offered housing to 288 people and provided more than just shelter, but support, to more than 2,000 others. The scale of our work has grown rapidly. In Wales alone, the number of people we support has increased tenfold. And yet, when I walk through our accommodation today and see people settling into rooms, making tea, and finding their feet, it is hard to connect those moments to a single phone call I received in the late 1980s.
In 1987, my wife and I moved to Stacksteads, a quiet rural village in stark contrast to the hurry of our previous home in Manchester. Rolling hills and fields replaced traffic, and the remains of old mills and quarries told stories of the generations who had worked in the valley before us. The small town was strung along a single main road, and before long, our neighbours became familiar to us, as did the close-knit community of our local church. Around that same time, we also came to know Sheila Halsall (who would later become the founder of The Sanctuary Trust) through a wider fellowship of churches. Both my wife and Sheila Halsall attended Maranatha, a women’s group, where those connections were first made.
We became good friends with Sheila and the large group of Halsall family members who attended the weekly meetings in the church in Stacksteads village. We met with each other and prayed for each other’s needs, the needs of those in our church and our local community. We all shared a mutual faith and understanding following Jesus, one in which I felt comfortable discussing my history of addiction. Not long after, Sheila Halsall was called to Rochdale to work as a live-in manager at Hutton House, a supported housing project for over 55’s run by the Baptist Housing Group. We were all grateful for our paths crossing during that brief time at cosy weekly bible studies, not yet knowing the mission we were soon to embark on.
Not long after she moved to Rochdale, I received a call for help from Sheila, who told me of the need in Hutton House. Sheila had recounted my struggles with substances that I had shared in bible study not long before.
Sheila felt the need to reach out to her old neighbours. Someone with lived experience could help with the chaotic community of kids and grandkids visiting their elderly relatives in Hutton House. She ran an unofficial drop in for these young people, reaching out with the love of God. She had noticed kitchen utensils, commonly used for drug consumption, and a TV had gone missing, and she suspected a need amongst the kids visiting the house, who were struggling with substance misuse.
Much like our cosy group in Stacksteads, a group of Christians with unwavering faith came together with the voices of those with lived experience, such as mine. The powerful collection of people with shared faith and people who had been through it all before began meeting again in Rochdale, praying, and discussing ways to help those who needed more than just shelter. As we reached out to Rochdale Council’s Drug & Alcohol team, and just as a small group of people began to receive more support, our group grew to fifteen people, who met regularly and established the very beginnings of The Sanctuary Trust.
We shared the passion to be a practical expression of God’s Love, to provide inclusive shelter to anyone, regardless of their background or personal circumstances. We prayed for a future of not just shelter, but short- & long-term relief and prevention, night shelters, work alongside other agencies, a benefits advice and guidance service, and a drop-in centre.
The very first endeavour of which would in later iterations become The Reaching Out Centre (ROC), Rochdale.
After meeting regularly for some time, we prayed for a place to set up a drop-in. I believe God provided a small, but empty shop on Tweedale Street, Rochdale, formerly a tailor’s store. We were blessed by a friendly Muslim man named Masood, who shared our agency to help those in need in Rochdale, and rented the shop to us for our first-ever drop-in.
On Christmas Eve, 1990, our first meal under the name ‘The Sanctuary Trust ‘ was cooked and served, and we went on to feed what felt like the entire estate over the next 3 days. This was the beginning of the first drop-in provision of The Sanctuary Trust.
It is hard to believe that a single phone call, one simple act of goodwill, could spark the last 35 years of hard work, growing to the charity we are today.
Amid the busy schedules and long working days, especially in these darker, colder months, it can be easy to lose sight of why we clock in each day. As Director, founder and ambassador, I have had the wonderful opportunity to pause & reflect on how far we have come since 1990.
Even as the pace of our growing charity fills my days, I take the time to look back at the abundance of prayers that have been answered over the years. God has answered and even blessed our work more than we have asked for, providing us with the opportunities and ability to go beyond what we first set out to achieve. I am deeply thankful to every staff member, every volunteer, and service user. I am grateful for every penny of donation, and every funder that has invested in the mission we prayed for in our small prayer group in 1990.
I am grateful for the answers to prayer that occur every single day across North Wales and Greater Manchester. Looking back, the pieces were already coming together. In our upcoming blog post, I will share how those beginnings led to the opening of our first hostel.
