Annual Report 2024
2024 has been a year of incredible growth and transformation for the HBF Group. With your generous support, we opened the Trauma Centre to our staff and 1,834 survivors, delivered life-saving care and rehabilitation in our bespoke, sector-leading clinical and community facilities, and began to expand our services to become a beacon of hope and best practice across the refugee, anti-trafficking and healthcare sectors. We are now poised to grow the scope and scale of our reach by 50%.
We are incredibly grateful to the community that has come together to make the Trauma Centre a reality – from the architects and designers who provided building designs free of charge, to the suppliers offering construction and refurbishment pro bono, to our generous funders and sponsors. Our President Emma Thompson has provided unwavering support throughout the journey. We would like to thank you all for your incredible support for the Centre, where thousands will gain the strength to fly for decades to come.
The Trauma Centre has enabled us to build capacity and confidence within the asylum and immigration sector to take on more complex cases, in response to the tremendous demand for services that we are witnessing across the UK. We have trained more than 1000 professionals in trauma-informed ways of working, ensuring that survivors beyond the ones we serve directly can receive the help they need.
Our partnerships continue to play a key role in the future, increasing our impact and reaching more survivors. In 2024 we have delivered mental health support to 142 children and young people through our partnership with Young Roots, and we have launched new partnerships with the British Red Cross and Hummingbird, embedding therapists within their services in Leicester, Derby and Brighton, expanding our national reach. Asylum Aid trained and developed new advisers with programmes such as the Justice First Fellowship – a grant that helped us recruit and train an aspiring solicitor. Our unique training programme for the training and supervision of legal advisers, funded through the Justice Together Initiative, meant that Immigration Advice Authority (IAA) Level 2 Advisers who work in underserved regions, including West Yorkshire, Devon, Cornwall, Manchester and Wales, could access best practice training that improves the impact they deliver for clients. As a Group, we are having greater external impact in the sector and we are continuing to collaborate with others to challenge the hostile system and policies.
In 2025, we were pleased to announce Alison Pickup as our new Chief Executive Officer. Alison, who was the Executive Director of Asylum Aid took over from Kerry Smith, who led the Group since 2018. During her four years at the helm of Asylum Aid, Alison has significantly grown its impact and led several legal challenges bringing about positive changes to the immigration and asylum systems. We are all incredibly grateful to Kerry for her leadership and look forward to continuing our growth with Alison as our new CEO.
Our achievements of 2024 are thanks to the determination and hard work of our dedicated team and volunteers. Thanks to their commitment to improving the lives of survivors, we have had outstanding impact, which we are proud to share in this report.
Click on the arrow below to read our Annual Report for 2024.