He resigned his commission in the Navy to read Modern History at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and then trained for the priesthood at Cuddesdon Theological College.

The seemingly intractable problems of poor social housing and the resistance of the working class to the established church meant that religious observance in Woolwich was declining faster than in the rest of the country.

A discothèque was built in the crypt, and the church's youth club was so successful that local probation officers fought to get their clients accepted as members.

His abrupt style and ability to garner publicity for his project alienated some of his fellow clergy in the diocese: But Stacey didn't neglect the traditional model of parochial ministry.

He felt that Oxfam was well placed to do what Bob Geldof attempted 30 years later - lead a national campaign to Make Poverty History.

This would have involved educating the public on the enormity and complexity of relieving poverty in the Third World which could only be done by massive British government aid.

In spite of this three years later he was appointed to be Kent's Director of Social Services, one of the three largest departments in the country, with 6,000 staff caring for 50,000 clients serving a population of 1.5 million.

The publication 'A Study in Leadership: Nick Stacey and Kent Social Services' written by Don Brand, published in January 2009, explains, 'Stacey inherited a department needing extensive modernisation in an authority with little appetite for change.

By the time Stacey left in 1985 he had transformed Kent into one of the leading departments in the country with a national reputation for imaginative innovation and a strong influence on government policy.

Stacey was convinced that putting a lot of unloved, insecure, often delinquent and troubled teenagers together exacerbated their problems while the institutionsto which they were sent became springboards for borstal and prison.

His autobiography, Who Cares, written shortly after he left the stipendiary ministry, is a trenchant and honest description of his experiences in the Church of England.

Although out of print, it is occasionally available through second-hand book dealers, and is essential reading for historians of the Church of England in the twentieth century.

Stacey claims his work as a Director of Social Services gave him a greater opportunity of Building the Kingdom of God than he would have had if he had stayed in the ecclesiastical structures.

"[4] In 2006 Stacey was interviewed as part of the British Library's oral history series, National Life Stories, under the title "Pioneers of Charity and Social Welfare".

Among the residents was campaigner Teresa Cooper, whose persistence across three decades led to the Kendall House review, which finally brought the full story of abuse to light.

The independent review's 2016 report[6] found the institution to have inadequate governance and oversight, made 19 recommendations for the Dioceses of Canterbury and Rochester, and concluded that they should apologise to the women who had suffered abuse.

The BBC article implied that Stacey, a Church of England parish priest in the 1960s, oversaw Kendall House and must have known of the abuse and failed to report it.

The revelations of abuse at Kendall House served to underline the importance of Stacey's pioneering role in the introduction of Professional Fostering.