Citizens Advice: A Vital Service for Hate Crime Victims

We caught up with Sarah from Uniting Staffordshire Against Hate (USAH), part of Citizens Advice — one of the services they offer, at this year's Pride in the Moorlands and discovered more about their work.

USAH supports anyone who's been a victim of a hate crime or hate incident, including people who are targeted because of their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or transgender identity.

The services that they offer are information, advice, and guidance about next steps following an incident or options available to them. They also offer emotional support, so if someone is impacted because of what's happened, they can provide support to help them deal with that. If someone does want to report what's happened to the police, they can support them with that too, helping them understand the process and also navigate it, all the way through to a court if need be.

People can report a crime or an incident to them even if they don't want anything in further to happen.

To contact USAH:

Visit www.usah.org.uk. There are referral forms on the website.

via the telephone opening hours Monday to Friday, 9am - 5pm on 0808 2787876

or via email at help@usah.org.uk

This year, Citizens Advice North Staffordshire has launched as a third-party Hate Crime Reporting Centre, which means that anyone who accesses any of the services, whether they go to see them about a debt problem, a consumer problem, etc.—if they're experiencing hate crime, or think that they're being targeted because of one of those things—they can tell any of the advisors, and they'll be able to give them advice at that first point of contact.

Citizens Advice: A Vital Service for Hate Crime Victims created 4th July 2026