Children and Detention

We believe that children who come to this country seeking asylum should be protected. We believe children should never be detained for immigration purposes.

Until 2010, the UK government was locking up about 1000 children a year for immigration purposes. These children, innocent of any crime, were being held for indefinite periods – days, weeks, months – simply because they and their families had sought asylum in the UK. The impact of detention can be devastating. Ripped from their communities, forced to leave behind their friends and their schools, children who are detained are deeply confused about what is happening to them.

Karin Littlewood, illustrator, and Beverley Naidoo, writer, author of Journey to Jo’Burg, outside Yarl’s Wood detention centre after visiting child detainees

Women for Refugee Women decided to shine a spotlight on the hidden stories of these families through its verbatim play Motherland, directed by Juliet Stevenson, which showed at the Young Vic in March 2008. Following this high profile series of events, a coalition of organisations and individuals built up which has campaigned tirelessly against this hidden scandal. The coalition has included Bail for Immigraion Detainees and the Children’s Society, which set up the OutCry! campaign in November 2008; the New Statesman magazine, which ran a campaign in collaboration with us in 2008; the Royal Colleges of Paediatricians, of General Practitioners and of Psychiatrists, which published a joint statement against detaining children in 2009; End Child Detention Now, which organised a press campaign from 2009; and Medical Justice, which published a report on the detention of children in 2010. The individuals who have spoken up include writers, actors, politicians, faith leaders, and ordinary people from all walks of life who have signed petitions, gone on demonstrations, written to their MPs and showed their solidarity with the families affected by this horrific policy.

Women for Refugee Women went on to show Motherland at Westminster and at Bedford near to Yarl’s Wood detention centre. We reached new audiences and persuaded politicians and influential figures in the arts and media to speak up for detained children. We have initiated visits to the  children in Yarl’s Wood by writers and artists and journalists (see Beverley Naidoo’s powerful piece in the Guardian). And we have supported individual families to speak out  with immense bravery about their experiences (read Meltem and Jasmine in the New Statesman and Amina in the Guardian).

We were delighted when the coalition government announced in May 2010 that it would end the detention of children for immigration purposes, and we contributed our views to their consultation on the policy change. However, we are concerned that this policy change is not being implemented effectively and that with the opening of the new facility in Pease Pottage where families will be held before removal that detention is "making a comeback" - see our article in the Guardian on this issue. We continue to work to persuade the government and the public that no child should be locked up for seeking asylum in the UK