About Crisis#
Crisis began in 1967, starting as Crisis at Christmas after the television drama Cathy Come Home, and still opens its Christmas centres each year. Today it works with thousands of people a year on their way out of homelessness, and campaigns and publishes research on ending it. Its year-round help comes through Skylight centres in Birmingham, Brent, Croydon, Edinburgh, London, Merseyside, Newcastle, Oxford and Swansea. It focuses on people who face the most barriers, such as those who cannot use public services because of their immigration status, and refers people on when another service would suit them better.
Becoming a Skylight member#
Each centre has its own page, with the areas it covers, opening times and how to get in touch; start at Crisis's get help page. The London and Edinburgh centres work with people over 16 who are homeless or at immediate risk of it. You can refer yourself, by email or by dropping in during opening hours, and professionals use the same route. Crisis says you will hear back within 24 hours, and if it can help, you become a member and work with a lead worker for a few weeks or longer. The London centre offers interpreters on request.
Crisis is clear that it is not an emergency service. For somewhere to stay tonight it points you to your local council, which has a duty to help, and to StreetLink in England and Wales or Streetwork in Edinburgh if you are sleeping rough.
What a lead worker helps with#
Crisis members get help finding, securing and keeping a home, getting the support they are entitled to from the council, claiming the right benefits, and gaining training and qualifications, with wellbeing support from clinical psychologists. The London centre adds housing law specialists and coaching; Edinburgh helps with evictions, rent arrears and landlords.
Crisis publishes nothing about changing your name. But most of that list depends on ID, and if your documents are in different names, a lead worker is a natural person to plan the order with you: which claim or application needs the new name first.
Crisis on ID and fixed addresses#
Responding to the government's digital ID proposals in September 2025, Crisis said people experiencing homelessness already face barriers because they have no fixed address, that many of the people it works with have no smartphone, and that any new ID system must make services easier to reach, not harder. It asked for an application route that does not rely on a fixed address.
Those barriers apply to a name change too. The deed poll itself costs nothing: anyone aged 16 or over can write out GOV.UK's free wording and sign it before two adult witnesses (can I get a deed poll for free?). The harder part is what follows. A deed links your two names but proves nothing about who you are on its own (is a deed poll proof of identity?), so keep it with whatever ID you have. If you claim Universal Credit, report the new name: Universal Credit and other benefits explains how.
Where Crisis works#
Crisis covers parts of England, Scotland and Wales; it has no centres in Northern Ireland. If there is no Skylight near you, its get help page lists other routes, including Shelter for housing advice and Turn2us for a benefits check, and the advice and housing charities page has more.
This page describes what Crisis publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. Crisis has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
