Best Practice Models for Providing Legal Education and Aid to Stateless Children
This report is the result of the investigation by 2022 Churchill Fellow and Director of the Stateless Legal Clinic Katie Robertson into best practice models for assisting stateless children.
In 2021 the Stateless Legal Clinic (SLC) was established at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness (PMCS) as a dedicated legal service to educate stateless children and families about their legal rights and assist Australian born children to apply for citizenship.
The SLC partners with the Melbourne Law School Clinics and the Refugee Advice Casework Service. In 2023 it was expanded to assist stateless adults, through an additional partnership with Refugee Legal.
Little is understood about statelessness in Australia and the SLC is the only legal service of its kind in Australia. Since its establishment it has been met with a high demand for assistance from stateless families and referring partner organisations and is poised to develop and expand further in scope and capacity.
SLC Director Katie Robertson was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2022, which enabled her to visit similar international legal services, as well as expert organisations and individuals working on the issue of childhood statelessness. The aim of this investigation was to understand how these more established comparative models operate and function, in order to implement broader service delivery for stateless children in Australia. The second aim was to understand how the Stateless Legal Clinic may be successfully expanded to assist stateless adults, as well as children.
Katie Robertson's investigation culminated in the report "Best practice Models for Providing Legal Education and Aid to Stateless Children".