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Cases we take

We provide free legal advice and representation to undocumented children, young people and families in the UK.

We take on cases of:

  • Children and young people anywhere in the UK aged 0 to 18
  • Applications for UK citizenship
  • Applications for leave to remain in the UK
  • If you are unsure about what you need, our lawyers can advise you.

Our service is:

  • Free: the legal advice and representation we provide is completely free. We work with lawyers and law firms across the country to provide the best quality legal advice and representation for free to those who need it. We are unable to cover Home Office fees or additional costs such as medical reports, although we may be able to refer you to sources of help with these costs.
  • Confidential: we will never share your information with the Home Office or anyone else.

Access our service

To access our service, please complete our referral form.

This is for:

  • Getting help for yourself, a family member or friend
  • Professionals (e.g. social services) referring someone into our service

UPDATE: We are currently experiencing high demand. Our current average waiting time is nine months.

Make a referral

Types of cases we work on

1. Leave to remain

It is possible to apply for permission to stay in the UK when a child or young person has lived here for seven years or more, and it would be unreasonable to expect them to leave the UK.

These applications can be complicated as you may need to prove more than just having lived in the UK for seven years to meet the requirements under the immigration rules.

2. Citizenship

A child may be eligible to register as a British citizen because of when and where they were born or through one or both of their parents’ immigration or citizenship status.

It is also possible to apply to be registered as a British citizen on a discretionary basis.

More information about our service

KIND support

We provide lawyers to work on the cases of undocumented children and young people in the UK. We work on two types of cases: applications for leave to remain in the UK and applications for UK citizenship. If you are unsure about what you need or what type of case yours is, our lawyers can advise you on your options.

We always use our resources where they are needed most. For this reason, we don’t usually work on asylum cases as these are covered by legal aid.

To access our service, please complete the referral form. Once you complete the form, we will assess whether we can help you and aim to get back to you within two weeks to confirm whether we can take on your case.

We will contact you for further information at that point and your case will be placed on a waiting list.

Urgent cases

If your case is urgent you must explain why on the application form.

Your case will be assessed and if we agree that it is urgent we will see whether any of our lawyers can take your case quickly. However, it may be that the urgency of your case means that it is unsuitable for our service. If this is the case we will contact you to let you know.

Cost

The legal advice and representation we provide is free.

The Home Office charges fees which we cannot cover. This means that you will need to cover the cost of your citizenship application. You may be able to apply for an exemption (a “fee waiver”) from the application fee and Immigration Health Surcharge. If we think that you are eligible to do so, we will help you with that application.

Sometimes third parties, such as doctors and previous legal representatives, will charge a fee for copies of your file or records. If we need these documents to help you prepare an application, we will request that they waive their fee but cannot guarantee that they will do so.

Our lawyers

We work with lawyers and law firms across the country to provide the best quality legal advice and representation for free to those who need it.

The work on your case will be done by lawyers from one of our partner firms under the supervision of our specialised expert immigration lawyers.

Once your case has been assigned to a lawyer, you will be told their name and the name and location of the law firm they work at and how to contact them.