Take Action
SIGN AND RAISE AWARENESS OF THE NO.10 PETITION!
You must be a UK voter or resident in the UK to sign the e-petition. Only your name is published on the petition website.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoChildDetention/
Please pass this link on to all your friends, families and colleagues and feel free to ask your political representatives, Councillors, MPs, MEPs, MSPs, or Northern Ireland, Welsh and London AMs to sign too it’s easy via the Write to Them website.
You could also write in to your local newspaper!
ASK YOUR MP TO SIGN EARLY DAY MOTION 139
Chris Mullin has re-tabled the Early Day Motion outlined below which attracted the signatures of 94 MPs in the previous parliamentary session. We want to ensure that all MPs support this motion, there really is no reason to treat children in this way.
To make it even easier we have drafted a letter which you can copy and paste into an email if you want. You can download it here: Draft Letter for MP.
***Please note that if you want to use the Write to Them website to contact your MP they block identical copy and paste messages so you would have to write our draft letter in your own words.***
Early Day Motion EDM 139 Detention of Children
19.11.2009
Mullin, Chris
That this House notes with concern that around 2,000 children are detained each year in immigration detention centres, some for periods of several months; further notes the opinion of Save the Children and the Children’s Commissioner that this is unjustified and damaging; further notes that families with children are among the least likely to abscond; further notes that some EU and Commonwealth countries have successfully introduced solutions other than secure detention for families who have exhausted their asylum claims; and urgently calls on the Government to end the practice of holding children in immigration detention centres.
ASK YOUR MSP TO SIGN THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT MOTION
If you are a Scottish voter please urge your MSP to support Christina McKelvie’s excellent motion. You can check who your MSP is by entering your postcode on the search page here.
S3M-5021 Christina McKelvie:
End Detention of Children in the UK—That the Parliament is disturbed to note the findings of a team of paediatricians and psychologists published in Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal, which found that 73% of the children held in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre whom they examined had developed clinically significant emotional, mental and physical health problems since being detained, including weight loss, sleep problems, bedwetting and speech regression; believes that these findings vindicate the Scottish Government’s insistence on pursuing alternatives to detention for asylum-seeker families with children; hopes that the community-based pilot launched jointly by the Scottish Government, Glasgow City Council and the UK Border Agency in May 2009 means that no more asylum-seeking children will be detained in Scotland; further notes, however, that, according to Home Office figures, 470 children have been detained this year in England and Wales, and calls on the UK Government to follow the Scottish Government’s example in introducing community-based alternatives to detention throughout the UK and end the practice of detaining children as soon as possible.
ASK YOUR DOCTOR TO SIGN THE MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS PETITION
This petition promoted by Dr Frank Arnold is particularly directed at medical practitioners.
If you are one please go the petition site by clicking here.
The administrative detention of children is damaging to them, cannot be made otherwise, and is unacceptable in a civilised society. We call for the immediate cessation of this practice which is demonstrably and permanently harmful to children’s health, both in the short and long term.
We call upon the government to end the immigration detention of children and families.
Until that happens urgent steps are needed to minimise avoidable harms to children. These are as follows:
Children and young people in immigration detention should be recognised as Children in Need and given the same safeguards, such as an Initial Assessment completed within 7 days.
Primary and secondary medical care to CYP and their families should be adequately resourced and provided on the same in-reach basis as for the prison service.
GPs in the community and doctors in secondary care should consider the damaging effects of detention on children and young people and wherever necessary make representations to the immigration services to prevent children with health problems from being detained
GPs providing care for children in IRCs should be especially mindful of the damaging effects of detention on them, and intervene in a timely way to protect their health and well being, including recommending release of any child at risk of further harm. We call upon the GMC and the medical profession as a whole to support doctors who may have to defend themselves for carrying out their duties toward these children.
RAISE AWARENESS!
When people learn about what’s happening to children in detention centres, first, they don’t believe it. Then, they want to stop it. Please tell everyone you know.
