Partnerships in Action
The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund is pleased to add its voice to the New Statesman campaign to end the detention of children for immigration reasons.
Child refugees arrive on Britain's soil every day of the week without a parent or guardian. They arrive, adrift from their own culture, language and all support structures, stripped of any certainty for their future, on the run from extreme trauma and in search of sanctuary. Some have made the long journey to the UK overland, surviving on their wits. Others are brought over by smugglers paid for by their families and are simply dumped once they reach the UK. All too often they are met by blanket public hostility, stigma, and discrimination. The intense psychological scars these young people have accumulated both in their home countries and in leaving their families behind are merely compounded by the isolation they face on their arrival in the UK.