We started the St Luke’s Advice Service in the autumn of 1999 in response to perceiving a need for a more client focussed service that was free at the point of use and could help folk in a variety of difficult situations sort themselves out administratively.

Prior to this I had been a solicitor in private practice and was increasingly frustrated with billing targets and pigeonholing client’s problems into a series of specific criteria.  The original chairman and I were keen (following our mutual reading of ‘The Street Lawyer’ by John Grisham) to develop a people-centred service to help and advise those in debt, relationship breakdown, with benefit queries, employment problems etc.  As he had been a barrister our vision was the same – to combine our faith with our professional experience and open a sort of  ‘Christian CAB’ (for want of a better description.)

We wanted to build somewhere we could show the love of God in action, treat people, regardless of their income or status, as individuals, give them dignity, and tailor our level of involvement to their specific needs. Our close links with St Luke’s and other churches in the town meant that we were able to offer creative solutions to people’s situations, something the statutory bodies were unable to do.  For example, we kept a destitute ex-husband who had gambled away his net sale proceeds in the former matrimonial home (and was therefore not entitled to a lot of help from the state) in shaving equipment and other toiletries for a number of weeks (as well as helping him with his benefit applications).

I suppose I was rather naïve in the beginning to expect that, with a phone and a place for private interviewing a service could be professionally offered.  Before we knew it we were fundraising for money for insurance, training volunteers, applying for charitable status, meeting regularly as a management committee and choosing resources. The rest, as they say, is history……