Who the Halo Project is#
The Halo Project began in Middlesbrough in 2011 to fill a gap: Black and minoritised women and girls facing domestic and sexual abuse were not getting help that understood their lives. It calls itself a specialist "by and for" charity, and every member of its team is a woman; its offices are a women-only space. Its stated aim is to end forced marriage, honour-based abuse and female genital mutilation, and it says it has supported more than 3,000 women from over 49 ethnic backgrounds. Alongside its casework it trains police, social workers and schools, and runs Student Halo Hubs with universities.
How to get support from it#
Survivors and professionals can use the same front door. The Get help page describes:
- A national specialist support line for anyone experiencing or at risk of honour-based abuse, forced marriage, FGM or domestic and sexual violence. It is open on weekdays in office hours, and you can also write by email.
- Live chat on weekday mornings and evenings and at weekends, at the times on its contact page.
- One-to-one support in the community, for women in Teesside, Darlington, Durham and North Yorkshire, including help with safety plans, advocacy with other agencies and support at court.
- Free family and immigration law clinics, each a 30 minute private appointment with a specialist solicitor.
- Halo Homes, safe accommodation for Black and minoritised women and their children, which also takes women with no recourse to public funds. Vacancies are listed on Women's Aid's Routes to Support system.
For outreach, the charity asks you to complete its online referral form with as much detail as you can. Its pages carry a hide-page button.
The survivor's handbook and its section on names#
Halo's resources page hosts "Forced marriage: a survivor's handbook", written by the government's Forced Marriage Unit in 2020. It is one of the few guides of its kind that deals with names directly. Under "Getting a new identity" it explains that personal details can be used by family members to trace someone who has escaped, and suggests:
- changing your mobile number, switching off location settings on social media, and changing bank passwords or opening a new account if others had access to the old one;
- starting your replacement identity papers with a copy of your birth certificate;
- changing your name by deed poll, which needs no solicitor, bearing in mind the cost of replacement documents such as a passport and driving licence;
- if you hold another nationality, asking that country's embassy or consulate whether it recognises a UK deed poll, and whether it needs a UK solicitor or notary to witness it.
It adds that a National Insurance number cannot be changed without the police's help, which is given only where they assess you to be in danger.
Reading it alongside today's rules#
The handbook's advice still holds, and GOV.UK has since set out the route that costs nothing. From your sixteenth birthday you can write your own deed using the wording GOV.UK publishes, have two adults witness your signature, and start using the new name the same day; such a deed is never filed with any court. Enrolment, the optional court record, costs £53.05 by GOV.UK's figures, and the notice it produces in The Gazette carries your new name and your address, unless you persuade the judge to print only part of the name. If family members may be searching for you, that difference matters more than any other.
More on starting again under a new name#
- Changing your name with two nationalities: why the other passport comes first.
- Can someone find out my new name?: what is public and what is not.
- Karma Nirvana: the national honour-based abuse helpline.
- Charities that help after domestic abuse.
This page describes what the Halo Project publishes on its website, read on 26 October 2026. The Halo Project has not reviewed it, and listing it here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
