Immigration Law Practitioners' Association
Refugee Children's Project
Children seeking international protection need the best possible representation. ILPA's Refugee Children's Project, funded by the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund, works to ensure that they get it. It provides training, publications and conferences on best practice and related topics. The project is designed to ensure that there are more immigration practitioners and practitioners in other areas of the law such as family law, criminal law and community care law, with the skill, confidence and support to undertake work with refugee children and the desire to do so, thus ensuring more and better representation for these children.
The project runs from June 2010 to December 2012. Lisa Woodall is the Project Coordinator. The project is supported and guided by an expert Advisory Group.
The work of the project
All elements of the project support and inform each other.
Training
At the heart of the project is a series of free training courses, held in different parts of the country and delivered free to participants, who include practitioners in immigration, family, community care and criminal law, as well as staff of organisational members of the Refugee Children's Consortium.
Publications and resources
From the materials used in preparation for, and at, training courses has come ILPA's Resources Guide for Legal Practitioners working with refugee children.
Discussions at training courses and at ILPA's children's subcommittee have culminated in the May 2011 ILPA publication Working with refugee children: current issues in best practice. This publication is available free of charge in hard copy from ILPA.
As part of the project, information sheets specifically about refugee children have been prepared as part of ILPA's information service, on topics including age disputes, the European citizenship judgment in the Zambrano case, the UK Border Agency's Family Returns programme and the Supreme Court judgment in ZH (Tanazania), detention of children, legal aid and children's best interests. Many more documents and resources have been delivered to members through the ILPA mailing and Children's subcommittee email list.
Conferences and events
The project helps to support the work of ILPA's Children's Subcommittee, which brings together members with a particular interest in working with refugee children.
The first ILPA Refugee Children's Conference was held in May 2011. Some 100 participants, including barristers, solicitors, advocates, staff of the UK Border Agency, social workers and staff of non-Governmental organisations came together with young people who had been through the asylum process and related procedures such as age assessment.
The young people held up a mirror to those involved as practitioners and decision-makers enabling them to see the asylum determination process, and their own role in it, through the eyes of children and young people. It was a challenging and exciting day for all, rich in material to support training courses, the work of the Children's subcommittee and the information to be disseminated in the future.
Participants were reminded of the harm that bad legal representation, and bad decision-making does to children and young people, but also that the best representatives stilll have much to learn. Sophie Barrett-Brown, Chair of ILPA, opened the conference. Ian Macdonald QC, President of ILPA launched Working with refugee children: current issues in best practice. Trainers on the training courses delivered as part of the project, teamed up with young people to run workshops on appeals (Colin Yeo, Renaissance Chambers) and age disputes (Shu Shin Liuh, Garden Court Chambers). Steve Bravery of Bravery Law, who trained on ILPA's course for criminal law practitioners, delivered a workshop on detention and removal and Clare Tudor of the Scottish Refugee Council delivered a workshop on guardianship for refugee children. In the final session, Manjit Gill QC and Benjamin Hawkin of No 5 Chambers, counsel in ZH (Tanzania), provided practitioners with their insights into the implications of the judgment. A report of the conference and papers from it were distributed to members through ILPA's mailing to members.
Informing ILPA's influencing work
The Project Coordinator, ILPA's Legal Officer and General Secretary, as well as members who represent ILPA at external meetings and on external advisory groups, all work to ensure that information from the project's training, publications, conferences and the work of the Children's subcommittee inform and are informed by ILPA's influencing work. The Project Coordinator represents ILPA at the UK Border Agency's National Asylum Stakeholder's Forum Children's subcommittee and at ad hoc meetings with the Agency.
