Research
The Children’s Commissioner for England’s follow up report
Simon Parker has produced a summary of the key findings of the Children’s Commissioner Commissioner for England’s follow up report. To read the report in full click here.
Alternatives to Child Detention
Alexa Kellow outlines the detention of asylum-seeking children and families in other countries
Lorek et al. Report on Children’s Health in Yarl’s Wood
A shocking report on the mental and physical health difficulties of children held in Yarl’s Wood detention centre which found that children detained were ‘clearly vulnerable, marginalized, and at risk of mental and physical harm as a result of state sanctioned neglect.’
The doctors recorded comments from parents about their children’s ’sexualised behaviour’, about older children’s tendency to wet their beds and soil their pants, about the ‘increased fear due to being suddenly placed in a facility resembling a prison’, about the ‘abrupt loss of home, school friends and all that was familiar to them.’
The doctors reported the photographing and the fingerprinting, the roll calls and the body searches, the ID cards that children must carry at all times, the ten locked doors between freedom and the family centre, the steep deterioration in parents’ mental health and parenting abilities, the self-harm and the suicide attempts.
Significant Harm – Intercollegiate Briefing Paper
A briefing from the Royal College of General Practitioners, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of Psychiatrists and the UK Faculty of Public Health describing the significant harm to the physical and mental health of children and young people in the UK who are subjected to administrative immigration detention.
