Lily Jones and the charity she started#
Cheshire Without Abuse was founded in 1977 by Lily Jones, who had arrived in Crewe three years earlier and run a women's rights action group there. In the early days she ran a helpline from her own home and helped women move across the country to get away; it took until 1983 to open her women's refuge. She died in 2003, aged 53. The charity, now known as MyCWA, has grown to 18 refuges and runs the Lily Jones Support Centre in Crewe.
Its services cover a helpline, temporary crisis accommodation for people in immediate danger, drop-in advice, legal clinics, support groups and recovery programmes, counselling, specialist programmes for children, and behaviour change programmes for people who want to stop being abusive. Staff help with practical problems such as housing, legal aid and money.
Which number to start with#
MyCWA's get help page sends people to different places depending on who they are:
- Existing MyCWA clients use its own 24/7 helpline.
- Anyone new in Cheshire starts with the Cheshire East Domestic Abuse Hub.
- People outside Cheshire are pointed to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline.
- People in Cheshire worried about their own behaviour can refer themselves to its behaviour change services through the site.
There is also a contact form for messages, answered within 48 hours but not watched for urgent ones. Professionals are asked to phone rather than use the form for referrals. For professionals across Cheshire East it offers training, a lending library of therapeutic stories and a toolkit for spotting abuse of people living with dementia.
Help you can use from home#
Step Forward to Recovery is a free, self-paced online course for domestic abuse survivors anywhere in the UK, which MyCWA wrote with survivors at different stages of recovery. You fill in a short form and the link appears on screen. Its self-help resources explain many forms of abuse, including LGBTQ+, elder, financial and reproductive abuse and abuse by a teenager towards a parent.
Legal aid and the family court#
Three short guides, published in February 2026, are the most practical:
- Understanding legal aid explains that it can cover legal advice, mediation or representation, and links GOV.UK's eligibility checker.
- What is a McKenzie Friend? explains who can sit beside you in court if you represent yourself, and what they cannot do: speak for you or give legal advice.
- What to expect in the family court links SafeLives and Cafcass guides to the process.
These matter if a change of name involves your children. A child's surname or first name can only change with the agreement of every person holding parental responsibility; otherwise a parent applies to the family court, usually on form C100, which costs £270 (the C100 route). On legal aid, GOV.UK's domestic abuse page explains that you will usually need evidence of the abuse, and names a refuge manager and a domestic abuse support service among the people who can give it.
Your own name#
MyCWA publishes nothing on changing your own name, and an adult's change needs no court and no one's permission; GOV.UK's sample deed, copied out and signed in front of two witnesses, costs nothing from age 16. The safeguards worth taking are in our page on names after abuse, and the case where the other parent refuses in a child's name without consent.
This page describes what MyCWA publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. MyCWA has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
