By John Glanville, Deputy National Coordinator, KIND UK
This Pro Bono Week, I want to say a huge thank you to our pro bono partner firms and all the 900+ lawyers and legal staff currently working on KIND UK cases.
We help undocumented children and families as they navigate the UK’s complex immigration, nationality and citizenship systems. We’re able to help more than 700 children every year only because of the phenomenal amount of pro bono support we receive from our partner law firms – and the hard work of pro bono lawyers and volunteers.
Undocumented children are those who live without secure legal status in the UK or are not able to prove the status they do have. They are often exceptionally vulnerable to poverty, social exclusion and exploitation. They face problems accessing education, healthcare, housing and work, and so becoming documented can mean everything.
Together with our partners, we’ve helped over 4,000 people since KIND UK opened its doors. Each one of those cases and successes is a client who we’ve met, and, thanks to our work, they are children who can grow up with all the benefits of secure status in the country they call home. They are teenagers approaching adulthood who are now able to work, study and take full advantage of the benefits that British citizenship brings. They are families who will no longer face the risk of being torn apart.
This week is a chance to celebrate pro bono work. KIND UK is now in the 8th year of our highly effective pro bono model – combining the resources and skills of corporate law firms with our expert immigration lawyers.
The pro bono lawyers we work with throw themselves into their cases, dealing often with families in very challenging circumstances. They’re operating in an unfamiliar area of law, but are ready to spring into action to address unexpected emergency situations, and navigate all the complexities of a live case with a lot at stake.
Whenever I ask our pro bono lawyers why they have got involved with KIND, I’m always taken by how dedicated they are to the work – and how much they enjoy it. They talk about meeting the clients and working with a group of people completely beyond their normal clients. They talk about the joy when they get a positive decision from the Home Office, and how it feels to tell a family that their future is secure, sometimes after years of worry and risk. And they talk about professional development – how ownership of cases and building real relationships with clients is a valuable opportunity for them to refine skills and approaches that they can take back to their other work, whether that’s chargeable work or pro bono.
So many children, young people, and families rely on our support, and I’m proud of what we have been able to achieve. We’re good at what we do – 99% of the cases we take, result in the client getting secure status. This is down to our strong partnerships, to the expertise of our staff, and the commitment, skills and hard work of our partners.
Thank you to everyone involved this pro bono week.
