A majority of the capital she earned went to drama and elocution funding with the wife of the Durham Cathedral's choir leading tenor and she gave performances at mining villages but decided against a stage career.
Lacey moved to Dagenham in 1932, joining the staff of a mixed YWCA and YMCA community centre in a 200,000-strong housing development for those leaving the East End of London.
[2] Following the end of the Second World War,[5][6] she became YMCA education secretary to the demobilising British Army of the Rhine (BAOR),[1][3] a post she held until 1947.
[1] In December 1952,[1] Lacey transferred to the British Council Inter-Church Aid and Refugee Department,[2][7] and was appointed secretary (later director).
[2][4] Working from both Geneva and London,[1] Lacey was eager to promote the organisation's missionary function and argued the Churches had to lead the fight for the hungry world.
[2][3][8] She was a founder member of the Voluntary Service Overseas organisation in 1958,[4][9] and was part of the 1959 United Kingdom World Refugee Year Committee.
[4] Upon retirement,[5] Lacey served as director of the national charity Family Welfare Association from 1969 to 1973 and reorganised the Churches' Council for Health and Healing between 1973 and 1977.
[9] Late in life, the Socialist East End priest John Groser prepared Lacey for confirmation; she spent her retirement at her flat in Westminster.
"[1] She termed the phrase "Need not creed" that became the slogan "epitomising the giving of aid by Christians after an era in which inspiration for sending money overseas had been prompted as much as by evangelism as by compassion.