Children in detention
From United Kingdom Wiki
House of Commons Home Affairs Committee report on The Detention of Children in the Immigration System (24 November 2009)Download here
The Arrest and Detention of Children Subject to Immigration Control: A report following the Children’s Commissioner for England’s visit to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre (2008) Download here
The New Statesman No Place for Children campaign calls on the government to end the detention of children for immigration reasons
"Every year, around 2,000 children pass through the UK’s immigration detention centres. They are there because their parents have applied for asylum in the UK. Detention is physically and emotionally damaging for children, as the detainees' testimonies so painfully demonstrate. In many cases, children have lived for most of their lives in Britain, and consider this country their home. Many subsequently receive refugee status, but children who have been detained remain deeply traumatised by their experiences."
Children at the Yarl’s Wood detention centre in the UK are suffering serious emotional damage
according to an official report on 22 August 2008. Along with wrongful detention of disabled children,
records have been kept inaccurately. In one instance, a child who had been detained for a
cumulative 275 days was reported to have been in the centre for only 14 to 17 days in full. Along
with physical health concerns, the mental health concerns included depression, bedwetting, refusal
to eat and insomnia with the conditions presenting themselves after arrival at Yarl’s Wood for many
detained children. The centre currently does not have a registered sick children’s nurse, though
they claim to have posted for the position, and there is no children’s counsellor.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/22/immigration.childprotection
