OutCry! ~~ Campaign to end detention of children and their families for immigration purposes

The Children’s Society and Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) are campaigning to end the immigration detention of children and their families.

Every year around 2,000 children in the UK are locked up in immigration detention.

Children in detention are either the sons or daughters of asylum seekers or migrants and detained with their families, or they are detained because the government wrongly believes they are over 18. They are the only children in the UK who can be locked up indefinitely without having committed a crime.

Please join The Children’s Society and BID to bring an end to the immigration detention of children and their families. Funded by the Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, we are campaigning together under the banner OutCry! and we need your help to stop this national scandal.

We believe detention damages children.

Taken from their communities, with little understanding of what they have done to deserve being locked up, detention has a devastating impact on children. Scared and anxious, children we work with have experienced insomnia, weight loss, bedwetting, depression and self harm while in detention.

We believe the detention of children is unnecessary.

There is no evidence that families run away from the authorities if they are not detained. As anyone with children will know, their education and health needs, friendship ties and the desire to be settled in the UK all prevent families ‘disappearing’.

We believe the detention of children is a shameful waste of taxpayers’ money.

It costs £130 every day to keep a child in immigration detention. We regularly work with children who are detained for over six weeks. To keep a family of four in detention for six weeks costs over £20,000.

Over the coming months we will be working with other organisations and individuals who share our view that the detention of children must end. We will be pressing the government to change its policy so that children are no longer locked up in detention centres.

If, like us, you think detaining children is unacceptable please add your voice to the campaign. We will keep you updated with campaign news and ideas of how you can take action to give some of the most vulnerable children in the UK their childhood back.

Help us put an end to this shameful practice - sign up to our campaign today.
 http://tinyurl.com/OutCryCampaign


Children?s Society is a leading children's charity committed to making childhood better for all children in the UK:
 http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/

Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) is an independent charity that exists to challenge immigration detention in the UK. We work with asylum seekers and migrants, in removal centres and prisons, to secure their release from detention.  http://www.biduk.org/


End of Bulletin:

Source for this Message:
BID
The Children's Society