Children in residential care: who files for citizenship

If a foreign child is living in a residential care institution in Portugal under a child-protection order, the citizenship application is filed by the public prosecutor — not by the care home, not by its director, not by the social workers. The statute says so in as many words, and it also says the procedure costs nothing.

This is the least visible of the routes Portuguese law opens to minors. It has no entry of its own in the IRN’s list of application types, so searching for it by name gets you nowhere. If you are trying to place yourself inside the May 2026 reform and its new residence periods, note straight away that this route has no residence period at all: a child in care is deemed resident for this purpose.

Two institutions worth keeping straight

Citizenship is decided by the Ministry of Justice, through the IRN and the central registry office. AIMA handles residence permits and has nothing to do with this file. And the Ministério Público is not a ministry at all: it is the public prosecution service, a body of magistrates whose statutory job includes representing children at risk. English-language forums routinely merge all three, and the merge sends people to the wrong counter.

Who files, and why the care home cannot

The provision itself explains the design, so it is worth reading verbatim:

A child in residential care usually has no one in a position to sign an application — that is frequently why the child is in care in the first place. So the law hands the task to the prosecutor who is already on the protection file. The care team’s job is not to draft the application but to flag the case to that prosecutor, with the documents already on the child’s file.

Which orders count as «final»

This is the condition that decides everything. Portuguese child protection law lists seven measures; two of them involve placement, namely foster care and residential care. Only residential care in an institution fits this route — foster care, however settled, falls outside the wording.

«Final» is the opposite of interim. An interim order, made while the situation is assessed, lasts six months at most and must be reviewed within three. While that is the order in force, the condition is not met.

The part that genuinely confuses people: final orders are also reviewed, every six months, residential care included, for as long as the child stays there. That mandatory review does not turn a final order into a provisional one. The nature of the order comes from the decision that made it; the review is the supervision the law imposes on any order being carried out.

What the 2026 reform changed here

More than it looks, and in the child’s favour — unusual in a reform that tightened almost everything else. Before 19 May 2026 this rule was numbered 6(3) and was drafted differently: it applied to a final order made «in protection proceedings, under paragraph 3 of article 72» of the child-protection act, and it operated as a waiver of the conditions imposed on children born in Portugal.

• The number moved, from 6(3) to 6(4). Any form, opinion or draft still citing the old number now points at the rule on stateless people.
• Administrative orders now count. The narrow reference to judicial proceedings is gone, and an order agreed before the local protection committee is covered by the wording.
• It became a stand-alone, discretionary grant. It used to be a waiver sitting inside another route; it is now «the Government may grant», with the best interests of the child named as the criterion. More autonomy, less automaticity.

Applications already filed on 19 May 2026 are decided under the old wording — the reform says so expressly for pending administrative procedures.

The cross-reference that now points at the wrong rule

Here is the detail nobody has fixed. The child-protection act, listing what the prosecution service does, says it may bring naturalisation procedures «under paragraph 3 of article 6 of Law 37/81». That sentence was written in 2018, when paragraph 3 was indeed this rule.

The 2026 reform amended the Nationality Law and nothing else — its stated subject-matter is that single statute. The child-protection act was left untouched. So the cross-reference now lands on the paragraph about stateless people.

This takes nothing away from the prosecutor: the power is conferred by the Nationality Law itself, which is an organic law and outranks the other text. But it is worth citing the current number rather than the stale cross-reference. It is the same phenomenon that already affects the nationality regulation, which was never brought into line.

What the file has to contain

The regulation gives this route an article of its own, article 20-A, added in 2022. Three documents: the birth record; criminal record certificates, but only if the child has reached the age of criminal responsibility, which in Portugal is 16; and a certified copy of the final court order, once it can no longer be appealed. The prosecutor’s application states the court where they sit.

Look at the third item. It assumes a court order — and since May 2026 the statute also accepts an administrative order, agreed before the protection committee, where no court order exists to certify. Where the two disagree the statute wins, because a regulation implements a law and cannot contradict it; in practice what goes into the file is a certified copy of the protection agreement and of the decision approving it. If a counter insists on a court order that does not exist, that is the argument to make.

For 16- and 17-year-olds the criminal-record requirement applies, as on the other minor routes. On that, and on what happens to a file still open when the applicant turns 18, see children and the citizenship test — the eighteenth-birthday trap is real and is solved in advance, not on the day.

No fee, and no residence to prove

Two advantages of this route that are rarely written down together. The first: the statute declares the procedure free for the people covered by this paragraph. It is not a discount to request or an exemption to justify. Other fee exemptions require documentary proof; this one does not.

The second is a legal fiction, and it solves the hardest problem in these cases: children placed in those institutions are deemed resident in Portugal for naturalisation purposes. No residence permit, no counting of years, no proof of lawful residence — which is precisely what a child in institutional care, often without documents from the country of origin, could not assemble.

1. Final order

   A court decides, or the protection committee approves the agreement, and the order stops being interim.
2. Flagging

   The care team takes the case to the prosecutor already handling the protection file.
3. Application

   The prosecutor files it, stating the court where they sit, with the documents attached.
4. Decision

   The grant is discretionary and weighed against the best interests of the child. There is no fee.

What to do, depending on who you are

Working in a care home: check two things per child — whether the order is final, and whether the child is a foreign national. If both hold, the next step is a conversation with the prosecutor, not a draft application of your own.

Working on a protection committee: since 19 May 2026 orders agreed at committee level count, which was previously arguable. It is worth reviewing the files of foreign children under a final residential care order.

The young person, close to 18: time is against you, because the provision speaks of minors. Raise it on the protection file before the birthday; afterwards the path is a different one, and the map of the four minor routes is where to look.

And if what brought you here was the question of language, history and symbols: on this route it does not arise. For those who do have to sit the exam, the free practice test shows in ten minutes where the gaps are.