About Us
improving mental health support in the building materials industry
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Our Story
The Support Yard was founded by Samantha Hanks, and joined on the Board by four other well-known industry professionals who all share a common belief that better mental health support is needed right across the building materials sector.
We want to help both merchant and supplier businesses introduce comprehensive mental health support for their teams and colleagues, building resilience across their organisations and helping them better support anyone struggling with their mental health.
Together, the Board brings experience from different parts of the industry, and are united by the desire to create a practical, approachable and supportive mental health organisation that understands the pressures people face both inside and outside of work.
Through early intervention, lived experience and peer-led support, The Support Yard aims to help individuals right across the building materials industry regain stability and feel better supported throughout their personal and professional lives.
Who We Are
Samantha Hanks
Founder
Learn more about Sam
Samantha Hanks is the Founder and Director of The Support Yard CIC. With a 20-year background in the industry and a deep understanding of the pressures faced by people working within it, she is passionate about creating practical, relatable support that genuinely connects with people.
What makes The Support Yard different is its commitment to Lived Experience Peer Support. Every aspect of the organisation has been built on the belief that people who have faced and overcome significant challenges are uniquely placed to support, educate and inspire others. Rather than relying solely on theory or clinical models, The Support Yard combines professional knowledge with the credibility, trust and understanding that comes from lived experience.
For Samantha, this is deeply personal. Having grown up in the foster care system and experienced an abusive childhood, homelessness, financial hardship, single parenthood, and a serious mental health crisis that led to a suicide attempt, she understands first-hand how isolating life’s challenges can become. She also understands what recovery looks like – not as a concept, but as a lived reality.
It was following her own recovery journey that Samantha founded The Support Yard.
As she explains:
“The Support Yard exists because lived experience changes conversations. When someone sits opposite a person who has genuinely walked a similar path, overcome adversity and rebuilt their life, barriers come down. Trust is built faster. Stigma reduces. Hope becomes real. I didn’t create The Support Yard because I have all the answers. I created it because I know the power of people helping people through shared understanding, and because nobody in our industry should feel they have to struggle alone.”
Today, Samantha uses both her industry experience and her lived experience to help organisations move beyond awareness campaigns and towards meaningful action. Her work focuses on early intervention, workforce resilience, culture change, and creating environments where people feel safe to speak openly and seek support before challenges become crises.
Alongside her work with The Support Yard, Samantha contributes to wider mental health and wellbeing initiatives, ensuring that lived experience voices are represented in service development, organisational decision-making, and industry-wide conversations.
Through collaboration, education and Lived Experience Peer Support, Samantha is working to help create a stronger, healthier and more connected industry – one where seeking support is viewed as a strength, recovery is visible, and nobody has to face life’s challenges alone.
Jennie Ward
Director
Learn more about Jennie
Jennie Ward has worked in the construction and building materials media sector for more than 17 years, including 10 years as Group Editor of Builders’ Merchants News, where she developed a strong understanding of the people, businesses and challenges that shape the building materials industry.
Throughout her career, Jennie has built close relationships with people right across the sector and is passionate about helping to create a more supportive and understanding industry culture, particularly around mental health and wellbeing.
Alongside her professional experience, Jennie has faced her own personal challenges, including experience of a family member’s terminal illness, living with anxiety since childhood, and more than 20 years of chronic pain. These experiences have helped shape her belief that mental health support should be more open, accessible and better understood throughout society.
Now managing her own business, JKW PR & Marketing, Jennie is proud to be part of The Support Yard and its mission to help ensure people across the building materials industry can access the understanding and support they need, when they need it most.
Lucyanne Matthews
Director
Learn more about Lucyanne
Lucyanne Matthews has worked for Builders’ Merchants News for 22 years and, in that time, has championed diversity and inclusion, worked toward creating an inclusive industry for women to thrive in and bought mental health to the forefront of the industry’s attention.
Being the publisher of a leading industry title has come with a moral responsibility to inform and educate the sector about the many unseen issues everyday people face. Lucyanne has experienced close personal loss and overcome the emotional trauma of losing her husband and other close family members.
Living in East Sussex close to her family and with three lively dogs, Lucyanne loves the outdoors, gardening and walking, and has challenged herself by running marathons and half marathons to raise money for charities that work with veterans with PTSD, and has even jumped out of an aeroplane to raise money for Parkinsons.
Jamie Fisher
Director
Learn more about Jamie
Jamie Fisher is a commercial leader with more than 30 years’ experience working across the UK construction materials and builders’ merchant sector. Throughout his career he has held senior leadership positions, helping businesses grow, developing people and building strong relationships across the industry.
Alongside his professional career, Jamie has developed a deep interest in mental health and wellbeing. Like many people, he has faced periods in life where pressure, responsibility and personal challenges have tested his resilience. Those experiences taught him the importance of talking openly, seeking support when needed and recognising that mental health is something we all need to actively look after.
Jamie believes that too many people within the construction supply chain still suffer in silence. He is passionate about helping create an industry where conversations about wellbeing are normal, support is accessible and nobody feels they have to face challenges alone.
As a Director of The Support Yard CIC, Jamie brings a combination of commercial experience, industry knowledge and personal insight to support the organisation’s mission of improving mental health and wellbeing across the sector.
Away from work, Jamie is a husband, father, charity trustee and Liveryman of both the Worshipful Company of Plumbers and the Worshipful Company of Builders’ Merchants.
Lauren Harrison
Director
Learn more about Lauren
Lauren Harrison is a Sales Executive at Klipboard, bringing 8+ years of experience within the building materials industry. She began her career with NMBS in 2017 and has since developed a strong understanding of the sector. Lauren is passionate about attracting new talent and increasing diversity. She believes that broadening representation and creating inclusive opportunities are essential to the sector’s long-term success.
Lauren is open to sharing her raw experiences of mental health and neurodiversity, including her diagnosis’ of AuDHD, PTSD, depression, anxiety, substance abuse and eating disorders. Drawing on her own journey, she is dedicated to supporting others through conversations around resilience, mindfulness, and personal growth, helping to create greater understanding and acceptance.
Outside of work, Lauren enjoys playing netball, binge-watching true crime documentaries and spending time with family. She brings energy, authenticity, and a people-first approach to all aspects of her personal and professional relationships.
A Letter from the Board
The building materials industry has given all of us a great deal over the years. It has given us fulfilling careers, wonderful opportunities, incredible friendships, support networks and a real sense of belonging. For many people, this sector becomes far more than just a job – it becomes a community, and one that we are all incredibly proud to be part of.
But we also know how challenging our industry can be. Everyone works long hours, has high targets, deals with stressful situations, and there are often not enough people to do everything that needs to be done.
As the Board of The Support Yard, we all come from different backgrounds and have our own unique experiences, but there is one thing that connects us all. Every one of us understands, and has personal experience, of the very real impact that mental health challenges can have on individuals, families, workplaces and lives. This is not something we see as a box-ticking exercise. It is deeply personal to each and every one of us.
Across the building materials industry there are thousands of hardworking people who spend their careers supporting customers, colleagues and businesses, often while quietly carrying their own pressures, worries and struggles. There is often a tendency to put on a brave face, keep going and avoid talking openly about how we are really feeling, but we believe that has to change.
The Support Yard has been created to help build a culture where people feel able to ask for help without fear of judgement, and where support is practical, accessible and genuinely rooted in lived experience. We want to create something that feels relevant to the people working in this industry every day, whether they are in merchants, manufacturing, distribution, supply chains, offices, yards or on the road.
Our ambition is simple. We want to help make the building materials sector a healthier, more supportive and more compassionate place to work. We know we can’t solve every problem overnight, and we know meaningful change takes time. But what we can all do – today – is start those important conversations, create safe spaces, provide practical support and remind people that they are not alone.
The response we have already received from across the industry has been incredibly encouraging. It has reinforced something we have all believed for a long time: people in this sector genuinely care about one another, and there is a real appetite to do better when it comes to mental health and wellbeing.
We are hugely grateful to everyone who has supported The Support Yard so far, whether through conversations, encouragement, partnerships or simply by sharing our belief in what this could become. This industry has supported all of us throughout our careers. The Support Yard is our way of giving something meaningful back.
Thank you for being part of the journey.
Sam, Lucyanne, Jamie, Lauren & Jennie
The Board of The Support Yard
Our Partners & Sponsors
