A new facility to accommodate asylum seekers and their children has been condemned by campaigners, six months after the government promised to end the mistreatment of minors in immigration centres.
The centre due to open next month in Croydon, south London, emerged amid anger that since the May general election, despite deputy prime minister Nick Clegg’s description of child detention as “state-sponsored cruelty” and a “moral outrage”, over 100 children have faced detention at such centres.
Campaigners argue that the new centres will “replicate” some of the worst conditions at the notorious Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre.
Medical studies on detained children at Yarl’s Wood, showed that they suffered significant distress, were prone to self harm including acute depression and had suicidal thoughts. Clegg announced in July 2010 that the family wing of Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre would close down as part of government plans to end the immigration detention of children awaiting removal from the UK.
Campaigners condemn proposals an alternative to the previous detention regime. The proposals have failed to mention any plans to monitor the welfare of children in a place where they could be held for up to 28 days.
Sarah Campbell of the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) said the new centre would cause “unacceptable distress and disruption” to children because of a lack of safeguards in place to ensure children’s welfare. She also said the plans appear to leave families with no choice to move into the centres or risk having the funding of their housing stopped and to avoid to risk making children “destitute” by stopping funding for housing if families refused to move to the centre.
Children’s groups have become concerned that the Croydon centre could be the first in a number of a new series of secure centres where families would be subject to CCTV monitoring and have restrictions on their movements.
Campaigners say that families in the Croydon centre would be trapped because they are not provided with financial support and will not have the means, for example, to have access to legal advice. Campbell pointed out that while Yarl’s Wood had a school, the Croydon centre had no such facility: instead, children will be offered “age related work packs”, which, she said, would be insufficient.
“Residence in the Croydon accommodation is likely to be a stressful experience for the families involved, and we are concerned that no plans are set out for support to be provided to children and parents,” she said.
In November 2007 an evaluation of a similar pilot project concluded that families reported feeling “coerced and frightened”.
A source from the Home Office said that the Croydon pilot was an “open accommodation” scheme where families lived in the community and could not be described as detention, which the government was committed to ending.
In another development which angered campaign groups, last week the UK Border Agency began piloting a separate scheme to remove families from the UK without notifying them on the date of removal by simply putting them on to a plane. Families will be notified that they will be forced to leave any time in the following three weeks after a 72-hour period has elapsed.
BID and the Children’s Society say a longer notice is crucial because it allows families an opportunity to seek legal advice over the decision.
Pressure on the treatment of children in the asylum system will increase when Channel 4′s Dispatches programme reveals the “profound psychological and physical harm” on young people seeking refuge in Britain from persecution, terrorism and war. There are many incidents where the Home Office turned down asylum claims despite evidence of extensive scarring from torture.
Donna Covey, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said that the government’s review into ending child detention had been “hugely disappointing” and that the asylum regime still contained “distressing elements such as dawn raids”.
David Wood, strategic director of the UKBA’s criminality and detention group, said it was seeking for alternatives to detention and that staff working at centres with families were trained to protect the wellbeing of children.
The UK Border Agency states that vulnerable families with specific medical needs will not be held at Croydon and that help from social services will be used if required. It also says: “We need to send a clear message that their time in the UK is coming to an end.”
