Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Malcolm Stevens, former lead Children’s Services Inspector with the Government’s Social Services Inspectorate, Director of Justice Care and a key advisor to Ian Duncan Smith’s influential Conservative think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, explains why Yarl’s Wood Immigration centre is no place for children and families. It is heartening news that the [...]
The first Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, writing in The Guardian, calls on the government to release the families from Britain’s asylum prisons now. Aynsley-Green who has done more than any single person to expose the arrest and detention of innocent children, the injustices and sheer horror of their lived experiences, urges: ‘a [...]
The government confirmed plans in the Queen’s Speech today that it “will limit the number of non-European Union economic migrants entering the United Kingdom and end the detention of children for immigration purposes.” However, David Cameron’s government has yet to commit itself to a time-table which means that the abusive imprisonment of children and their [...]
In Monday’s Guardian, Colin Firth speaks out against the continued detention of children and families and the appalling circumstances that led to the forcible return of Sehar Shebaz to Pakistan. I am distressed to learn that only days after the government agreed to end the iniquity of child detention, a mother and baby were summarily [...]
This is the text of Positive Action’s Statement to Supporters of the Sehar must stay in Scotland campaign. We made a last minute plea this morning at 8.30 am to all the key players including Deputy Prime minister Nick Clegg, Immigration Minister Damian Green, Theresa May Home Secretary, but to no avail. Sehar Shebaz was [...]
Clare Sambrook, novelist and journalist, is a pro-bono co-ordinator of End Child Detention Now This article is re-posted from OpenDemocracy 19 May 2010. At 11.36 this morning the mother of an 8-month old baby made a desperate plea for help on her mobile. ‘I told them please don’t send me and my baby in the [...]
As the government announces that Dungavel will no longer be used for the detention of children, but will be re-purposed as ‘a health check’ facility for families who are facing removal, young mother Sehar Shebaz and her baby are being transported in a prison van to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire from where [...]
Last night an 8 month old baby and her mother were arrested, taken from their home and forcibly detained in Dungavel immigration removal centre in Scotland. So what’s going on..? On 12 May, the new government said, ‘We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes’. There was nothing in the declaration to indicate [...]
If they mean the immediate closure of Yarl’s Wood, that should be a cause for great rejoicing. This is why we must hold them to it By Clare Sambrook (from OpenDemocracy, 12 May 2010). ‘We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes,’ says today’s coalition agreement. A stunning victory for children, decency and the [...]
In the early hours of this morning, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister issued a statement in which as part of a Tory commitment to put a cap on immigration it was agreed to put an end to child detention immigration controls (the latter was a Lib Dem proposal). End Child Detention Now believes that this [...]
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