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Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention from
Dr Marie O'Neill
STATUTORY DECLARATION
I, Dr Marie O’Neill, [address removed], Psychologist do solemnly and sincerely declare as follows:
1. I make this statement for the purposes of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention.
2. I have asked for my evidence to the Inquiry to be confidential. [Permission later granted for the statement to be made public].
3. I am a qualified and registered Psychologist, and hold a BA, MA, Teaching Certificate, and PhD. I have been working as psychologist in Australia since 1978, and worked previously in Canada as a psychologist and teacher. I have also previously worked for Family and Youth Services in South Australia.
4. I worked for Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) at the Woomera Immigration, Reception and Processing Centre (WIRPC) as a Psychologist for 7 and-a-half months. I worked for one week in March 2001 and then again from mid-May to December 2001.
Ability to provide for Children
5. One of problems for us in providing adequate psychological services to detainees was the numbers of people for whom we were required to provide care. The WIRPC was crowded during my employment there and a lot of people were arriving sick and deeply distressed. These people were mostly adults, but because of their numbers we could hardly ever get to the children.
6. We had to respond to those needs that appeared most urgent and we were driven off our feet by adults’ needs which were more immediate, and more obvious - adults are able to be more demanding and can refer themselves for help. People on high risk were also mostly adults and took up a lot of our time. I therefore generally had to leave the children to the teachers, social worker and counsellor to provide help that I might have provided.
7. Sometimes parents asked for help for them in relation to their children’s behaviour and if parents really wanted help this often worked. But very many of the parents didn’t have coping skills and were more concerned with their futures. Some hated themselves for having brought their children there. Their needs were heavily expressed and children just tagged along. I don’t feel that we got enough chance to give children sufficient attention.
8. The care available could have been improved by increased staff. A children’s centre would also have been useful. But it would have had to have been separated from rest of WIRPC or it probably would have been damaged or destroyed by rioters.
9. There was not enough assistance available to parents who were not coping. We could help if parents knew how to ask and had the confidence and the will to seek us out. But there were so many people and we could not always be free to help.
10. We were unable to do any screening or routine checks. The only screening I did was of unaccompanied minors in my first visit. I would have liked to have screened all children on their arrival but could not. Children had medical screening and sometimes things would be picked up and referred to us by caseworkers and teachers and DIMIA, but this did not happen often.
11. Because of the frantic pace we could not give treatment that we could have given in, for example, an ordinary schooling situation. Simply by having an experienced person observe children in a classroom, problems such as those with emotional disturbances, hearing, sight, speech and mental capacity can be identified. However this was not possible in this environment.
Environment
12. Children react not only to their physical environment, but also what is going on within and to their family. Most of the problems children faced in detention were in my view related to the stresses experienced by families and the coping ability/strategies of their parents. Families lived in small quarters and in close contact with others. They were exposed to stress and were often living in the same compounds as people from religious and cultural backgrounds which created tensions between groups.
13. Children who were in the WIRPC for a short time, perhaps 4-5 weeks, were briefly exposed to these stresses. Those who were there for longer would also pick up on the anxiety of the WIRPC caused by the uncertainty of the progress of visa applications.
14. The worst stress in detention is caused by not knowing what will happen and when things will happen. No estimates of time were given to detainees.
15. In addition to the uncertainty, the fact that we were never told what was going to be happening to detainees meant that we could never prepare them for outcomes. It was also difficult to provide appropriate services when you didn’t know who would walk out the next day, and who would walk in.
16. There were particular groups of people within the detention centre with various problems. Mandaeans and other Iranians, for example, had particular problems because they lacked hope of release. This caused depression amongst parents and accordingly their children.
17. If parents of children were incapable of taking care of them ie when they were sick or emotionally disturbed, we tried to find other parents to “foster” the children. FAYS knew that we were doing this and maintained formal supervision of those children.
18. Children also witnessed and were drawn into riots and disturbances. Some also witnessed self-harm, although public demonstrations of self-harm were not common in time I was there.
19. I observed children whose parents were on hunger strike and were drawn or forced into this as a result. I tried to encourage parents to allow me to take children to meals if they refused to do so themselves.
20. I regarded unaccompanied minors as being relatively well taken care of. Indeed, because other children had to rely on their parents to provide care, and sometimes the parents were, or became, unable to do this, unaccompanied minors sometimes received better levels of care.
21. From my observation, staff generally treated children appropriately. Sometimes they were stressed, but I regarded them as doing their best for the main part.
Physical Security and Medical Care
22. Children were brought in when they had physical injuries such as cuts and grazes and received prompt and adequate medical care. From my observation, people were also provided with hospital care when it was needed.
23. Self-harm amongst children was not common at the WIRPC when I was employed there. For a long time, there was none. Near the end of my time there one boy cut himself superficially and his mother brought him to me. He said “all the adults do it, I’m going to do it”.
24. FAYS was notified whenever we had concerns about child abuse. I did not regard child abuse as being prevalent, although I did regard denying children food by hunger strikers as child abuse, and told parents so. In my experience, child abuse was taken seriously by ACM in Woomera. We had good contact with FAYS officers and direct access to them, and they visited the WIRPC.
25. The High Risk Assessment Team (HRAT) was in place while I was there. One psychologist was present at the meetings of the team which were held at least twice a week. Often this was me. People making threats of self harm and those who had actually elf-harmed were registered as “high risk” and were isolated and guarded 24 hours per day. At the end of my time this included some teenage boys, but they were taken off “high risk” as soon as possible once they had calmed down.
26. Anyone on “high risk” was visited at least once a day by psychiatric nurse and psychologist. Intensive reports were kept and people would be monitored closely. I regarded the HRAT as generally effective. However, conditions for isolating people were not always ideal because the facilities were just not adequate – isolation accommodation consisted of demountable buildings with guards either inside the room or outside an open door.
I make this solemn declaration by virtue of the Statutory Declarations Act 1959 as amended and subject to the penalties provided by that Act for the making of false statements in statutory declarations, conscientiously believing the statements contained in this declaration to be true in every particular.
Signed 2 July 2002
Last Updated 30 June 2003.