The Strategic Legal Fund for Vulnerable Young Migrants

Overview

The Strategic Legal Fund for Vulnerable Young Migrants (SLF) is a fund to support legal work in the UK that goes beyond securing justice for an individual and makes a significant contribution to law, practice and procedures to uphold and promote the rights of vulnerable migrant children and young people more generally.

The SLF aims to tackle injustices and inconsistencies in law and practice that disadvantage or discriminate against vulnerable young migrants as a result of their migration status. The SLF uses the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as a framework for its work with both children and young people.

It aims to advance the general principles of the UNCRC as follows:

• The right to life, survival and development.
• The right to non-discrimination.
• Respect for the views of children.
• The requirement to give primary consideration to the child’s best interests in all matters affecting them.

The SLF supports strategic legal work which benefits vulnerable young migrants. They define this as:

• Migrants or the children of migrants,
• Who are under 25,
• Who are living in poverty, and
• Who face significant disadvantage or discrimination in connection with their (or their parents') migration status.

Who do they fund?

Those eligible to apply to the SLF are organisations based in the UK which are:

• Not-for-profit (NFP) organisations that provide specialist level legal advice to vulnerable young migrants. If you work for a NFP organisation regulated by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) and are applying to undertake work in the asylum or immigration field, you must confirm that staff leading on the proposed work are accredited at Level 3, Advocacy and Representation, in the relevant category of law.
• Firms of solicitors that provide specialist level legal advice to vulnerable young migrants. Solicitors’ firms need to demonstrate that the funded work does not include any element of profit and, as for all applicants, that there is a pro bono element included.
• All applicants must demonstrate that staff have appropriate skills, experience and expertise to undertake the strategic legal work proposed. All applicants are asked to provide supporting documents with their application, for example annual accounts, governing documents, or other financial information.
• The SLF welcomes applications from specialist legal representatives working in partnership with voluntary and community groups, who may be able to assist with research, gathering evidence and identifying clients. This type of application should be made by the legal representative with the other organisation(s) being subcontracted to do the work at an appropriate rate. applying that would be best suited to carry out the work.

Areas of Law

The SLF funds strategic legal work in any area of law where vulnerable young migrants experience disadvantage or discrimination as a result of migration status. This includes (but is not restricted to) potential cases in the areas of:

• Immigration
• Asylum and asylum support
• Human rights
• Education
• Housing
• Welfare benefits
• Discrimination
• Access to justice
• Community care

Funding Available

The total amount available for SLF grants from October 2017 to September 2020 is £450,000. Maximum funding for any one application will be £30,000 but, in view of the limited funding available, lower applications are encouraged. The average grant size is around £12,000. You need to demonstrate that your application represents value for money. Grants may be approved for a lesser amount than requested.

The SLF aims to complement longer-term funding with short-term grants to respond to legal opportunities. The maximum grant length is 12 months, and most grants are for six months or less.

The SLF will cover any reasonable revenue costs that you will incur to undertake the proposed pre-litigation research or to prepare a third party intervention. This includes temporary staffing, freeing up or extending existing staff hours, volunteer expenses, travel and subcontracting with other voluntary and community organisations.

The SLF is intended to generate new resources for strategic legal work. They therefore fund new or additional costs and capacity, rather than contributing to an organisation’s existing expenditure. However, a contribution to overheads may be included.

Staffing costs should reflect their real costs to your organisation and be no higher than appropriate legal aid rates. If work is costed above legal aid rates, then please explain why.

They want to maximise resources by using pro bono input where possible. Please describe and cost any pro bono input to the application, estimating how much pro bono time will be spent on the project and by whom (for example, solicitor, legal representative, or researcher). Please note that work at legal aid rates or above is not considered to constitute a pro bono element, given that this is deemed a ‘reasonable fee’ in the professional codes.

You should also check out the list of previous SLF grants to make sure your proposal does not duplicate any existing work.

Further Questions?

If you have any queries, please contact ILPA on claire.tindale@ilpa.org.uk