The Strategic Legal Fund for Refugee Children and Young People (SLF) opened in October 2011. The SLF supports strategic legal work: work which goes beyond securing justice for an individual to make a significant contribution to law, practice and procedures that upholds and promotes the rights of refugee and asylum seeking children and young people (up to the age of 21). The SLF is time limited and will run from October 2011 to July 2012.

The SLF will test a new model for supporting legal work in the UK (initially working in England and Wales) by providing flexible and responsive funding. It will distribute up to £300,000 to eligible providers of specialist level legal services to undertake a non-profit making piece of work which does not qualify for public funding. Initially, cases in areas of law relevant to refugee children, including asylum, immigration, human rights, community care, housing, education, discrimination and health, may be supported. See How to apply for more details.

The SLF funding model is evaluated throughout to determine whether it is viable for a more sustained period and/or whether its focus and areas of interest could or should be widened. Learning that arises in the course of the pilot will be fed back into the project and is used to amend and adjust the model adopted. Adjustments made will appear on these pages. Progress on SLF funded work and learning from evaluations can be found at Updates.

The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, established the SLF as part of its Refugee and Asylum Seekers Initiative to support refugee and asylum seeking children and young people. It complements existing funding to the Refugee Children’s Rights Project and the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association.

The SLF is delivered in partnership with Trust for London and is managed by MigrationWork CIC.