So according to the UnAustralian the detention camps for children are just
Low Security Childcare Centres
So really they are Childcare Centres, with a little low security. So would we allow Aussie kids in them?
Alarmingly, according to the governments findings between 2009 and 2011, there were 17,671 reported medical and mental health incidents including 6 deaths, 97 psychiatric hospital admissions, 1,554 acts of voluntary starvation, 127 injuries requiring hospitalisation, 353 self harm attempts and 338 self harm resulting in injury in Australian detention centers.
As a paediatrician, my role was to interview children and families, to visit their accommodation and to give an opinion about the impact of detention on their lives – their health and their mental health. Parents described their children as being “always sick”. Certainly most had a respiratory virus during our visit.
Young children are vulnerable to infection and the cramped living conditions on the island promote the spread of infection both within and between families. Many reported ongoing wheeze – asthma – likely exacerbated by both recurrent infections and the constant air-conditioned environment. Some children had waited months for transfer to the mainland for specialist care, including surgery.
Most distressing, however, was people’s heightened emotional state.
We interviewed more than 200 people and two weeks later I am haunted by their words.
'My life is really deth' wrote one 12-year-old girl who had been physically abused in her homeland and whose mother had self-harmed in detention. She had not eaten or spoken for three days and was threatening self-harm.
Intent to self-harm is of great concern. Immigration department data confirm that 128 children engaged in actual self-harm in the “onshore” detention network, which includes Christmas Island and the mainland detention centres, between January 1, 2013, and March 31, 2014.
Many of the children we met were anxious and had signs of both post-traumatic stress disorder and current distress. We saw children who described intrusive flashbacks and nightmares, children who had started bed-wetting or stuttering, children who were refusing to eat and drink and children who had stopped talking.
Many described their situation as “hopeless”, claiming they saw “no future". In the words of one unaccompanied minor, aged 17:
'We are very sad because of I’m in detention. Is there anybody in Australia who can help us. Please help us.'
During our visit the distress among detainees was palpable. It was expressed as overwhelming sadness and hopelessness, and manifest most dramatically by the high prevalence of self-harm in young mothers and psychological symptoms in their children.
http://www.independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display/christmas-island-child-detainees--in...
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