Commissioner says Yarl's Wood 'is no place for a child'
Janaki Mahadevan
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The Children's Commissioner for England has renewed calls to end the detention of asylum-seeking children and families after his latest report into conditions at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre.
Sir Al Aynsley-Green found the centre, managed by the UK Borders Agency and Serco, continues to be unsuitable for children despite efforts to improve conditions.
The progress report found children continue to experience distress during the process of arrest and transportation, with increasing numbers reporting they are separated from parents.
While he found healthcare standards had generally improved, Aynsley-Green said there is still a failure to prepare children for returning to their country of origin, with some not given adequate protection against malaria for example.
One case cited in the report reveals a child's broken arm had been left untreated for more than 24 hours despite the nurse being informed of the injury.
Aynsley-Green said: "Yarl's Wood is no place for a child. Ultimately I would like to see a far faster process and an end to the detention of children in the asylum system.
"There needs to be more education about the alternatives to detention. But I recognise an end to child detention won't happen overnight and am working to improve the arrest and detention process by looking at it from the child's perspective."
The report shows that since the last report in 2009, there has been an improvement in the environment with a less institutional feel, newly constructed classrooms and fewer prison style uniforms being worn. It also found that better facilities for feeding babies and a new complaints system had been established and children had stopped being transported to Yarl's Wood in caged vans.
But Lisa Nandy, policy adviser at The Children's Society, said it is "outrageous that children in the UK are subject to such inhumane treatment at the hands of the state".
"The concerns expressed in the report about healthcare provision at Yarl's Wood are especially worrying," she said. "The failure to respond to serious injuries, the inability to assess children's emotional needs and the deficiencies in preventative healthcare provision, such as immunisation, are bound to seriously impact children's well-being."
