What the Red Cross does for refugees#
The British Red Cross, incorporated by Royal Charter in 1908, describes itself as the largest independent provider of services for refugees and people seeking asylum in the UK. Its refugee teams give emergency help, one-to-one casework, one-off support and information, and its annual report for 2025 says they supported more than 37,900 people that year, including over 10,950 facing destitution. It also arranges flights for families joining a refugee in the UK, and runs an international family tracing service that looks for relatives lost through conflict, disaster or migration.
Finding your local service#
There is no single national advice line for refugees. Instead the local service page lists teams by place, from Cornwall to Newcastle, with services for Scotland, Northern Ireland and four areas of Wales, each with its own email address. Several areas in the south of England take referrals through an online form, and the Northern Ireland team also uses WhatsApp. You can contact them yourself; you do not need a professional to refer you.
Help for refugees is published in fourteen languages, from Amharic and Dari to Tigrinya and Ukrainian, and tracing appointments, mostly by phone or video, can be held with an interpreter. Two limits are stated plainly: the Red Cross does not give legal advice on family reunion, and it cannot refer anyone to the UK Resettlement Scheme.
Names in its family reunion guide#
The Red Cross publishes nothing on changing your name. What it does publish is practical advice on keeping a name consistent, which matters just as much to a refugee. Its self-help guide to refugee family reunion (version 6, September 2025) asks you to check the spelling of every name and date of birth in your family's documents and translations against what the Home Office recorded at your asylum interview. Where they differ, it says to explain the difference briefly in your statement. Its example is a daughter whose birth certificate and passport say Rebecca, while the interview record says Rebekah.
The same guide explains how to request your own Home Office interview records, and lists the evidence of status a sponsor sends: the grant letter, a screenshot of the eVisa, and any travel document. Its family reunion page also says that in September 2025 the government paused new refugee family reunion applications, so check that page for the current position.
What this means if you want a new name#
A transliterated name can reach English in several spellings, and the Home Office record is the one other organisations will check against. Before a new name appears on an eVisa, the Home Office's guidance on names wants to see that you really live by it: a deed poll, backed by other papers showing the name in daily use. A refugee with no national passport is one of the few people it will accept that from without one, and reissuing the eVisa cancels any travel document still in the old name.
So settle one spelling before you change anything, and talk to a registered adviser first if a family reunion application is open. For more:
- Your eVisa and UKVI account: the order of steps.
- Changing a name from another language: spellings, translation and keeping two countries' papers alike.
- Different names on your documents: what to do when papers disagree.
This page describes what the British Red Cross publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. The British Red Cross has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
