Katie Fennell joined CELC in 2013, already an experienced immigration lawyer, and quickly became an invaluable part of the immigration team there. In collaboration with the CEO at the time, Sue Bent, and Annie Cooper, in 2016 she became National Coordinator for a new programme: Kids In Need Of Defense UK. Together, they established and developed a project which would help some of the 215,000 undocumented children and young people in the UK to regularize their status and have a secure future in the country that they call home.
KIND UK brings corporate lawyers’ expertise, time, and resources to bear on a problem that often goes underappreciated and unaddressed. The people the project supports and has supported often come from marginalised backgrounds, and they are all subject to an immigration policy which makes their lives more difficult and more risky. Katie’s work made these problems visible to people with the tools to resolve them, and the project has so far helped more than 1500 children and family members to regularise and secure their status in the UK.
Katie spent more than fifteen years as an immigration specialist, helping people to build lives in the UK with security and stability, often from very unstable or difficult backgrounds. Before she came to KIND, did a great deal of work with displaced Chagossians, whose fight to return to and self-govern in their own territory has lasted decades. The common thread through everything Katie did was a constant eye for the vital but unglamorous work, whether that was citizenship and nationality with KIND UK, Chagossians against successive indifferent or hostile British governments, or ordinary people needing support with ordinary immigration problems as part of her work at the Immigration Advisory Service.
Photograph of Katie provided with the kind permission of her family
Katie was hugely skilled and knowledgeable, as well as patient, kind, open hearted and empathetic. She opened two huge doors – one, for the people who her work supported; and the other, for the people who have volunteered their time and skill to support the project. Everyone involved with KIND UK is changed by it, and there are now hundreds of lawyers in the UK and around the world who know more about the problems not being documented can create. Some of them have stayed with us for many years; others have gone on to work in policy areas where their experiences with us and with Katie will help inform more humane and fair treatment of children, regardless of where they or their parents are from.
We asked some of our staff and others who have worked on and with the project, if they would like to contribute some personal reflections. Very generously, some gave their time and thoughts, and some are included below.
Sue Bent – CEO and founder of KIND UK, 2016-2021
Katie leaves a huge legacy. Her dedication, determination and skill meant that through her work she changed the lives of many people. She saw the good in everyone, and was able to bring out the best in everyone she interacted with. She was astute, honest and often direct, but at the same time generous and supportive and loyal.
She is enormously missed, and I am grateful to have known her as a colleague and a friend.
Wendy Young, President and founder of KIND US
Katie was a true leader who brought both her heart and intellect to the protection of undocumented children. For KIND US, she was instrumental in building our transatlantic partnership and alliances with the legal community to advance the rights of some of the most vulnerable children in the world. She is truly missed but leaves a legacy of compassion and caring that we will all remember.
John Glanville, national coordinator for KIND UK
I met Katie when she hired me to sort out some reporting for a small project in the middle of scaling up rapidly; six years later I’m still working on KIND UK, and now taking care of a gift that Katie gave to all of us, in a project that does good every day.
Katie’s legacy on the project is an enduring one, and her personal legacy – to me, and all the other people she has worked with and for over the years – remains as bright and bold (and sometimes blunt) as it ever was when she was alive.
I have lost a friend, a colleague, a voice of clarity and reason in uncertain times. Working with and for Katie was a privilege for me, as I hope it was for everyone whose lives – professional and personal – she touched.
