The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have published a joint report aimed at minimising the number of children detained and reducing the physical and psychological harm caused by detention.
More than 60 children's authors and illustrators, including Quentin Blake, Carol Ann Duffy and former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen, have signed a letter to the Prime Minister backing the campaign,
The report estimates that around 1,000 children from families who have been identified for deportation are detained every year in Immigration Removal Centres. The average length of stay of children in Yarl's Wood, the UK's main such centre, is 15 days, but almost a third of children are detained for longer than a month.
It says that almost all detained children suffer injury to their physical and mental health as a result of their detention, including post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression, suicidal behaviour, weight loss and inadequate pain relief for children with sickle cell disease.
The policy of subjecting children to indefinite administrative detention, the report states, is incompatible with both the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Borders Citizenship and Immigration Act (2009), which places a statutory duty on the Home Office to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
Other countries such as Sweden and Canada have developed alternatives to detention. In Sweden, failed asylum-seeking families are accommodated in regional 'refugee centres', which are flats organised around a central office. Each asylum seeker is assigned a caseworker. In Canada, the state-funded Failed Refugee Project provides counselling and practical assistance to asylum seekers whose claims have been refused.
In the UK, a pilot project in Glasgow is allowing failed asylumseeking children and families to stay in designated flats while they await their return home.
Professor Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said, 'Detaining children for any length of time - often without proper explanation - is a terrifying experience that can have lifelong consequences. As a civilised society, we cannot sit back and allow these practices to continue - they are unethical and unacceptable. GPs work at the heart of their local communities and are well placed to work with families, agencies and the Government to come up with alternatives.'
FURTHER INFORMATION
'Significant Harm - the effects of administrative detention on the health of children, young people and their families' is at www.rcpsych.ac.uk.
