Home Office, 4th Oct 2006, Sophie Odogo, Enid Ruhango, members of the office of Alistair Burt MP, campaigners from Yarl's Wood Bedfrienders, Campaign To Stop Arbitrary Detentions at Yarl's Wood, and Crossroads Women's Centre.

"I was a victim of the Ugandan authorities and this inquiry shows I became a victim of the UK authorities".
Enid Ruhango (Ms B) - ex-detainee

"The overall picture the inquiry paints of institutional malfunction at Yarl's Wood is very disturbing. But not nearly as disturbing as the reality".
Dr Frank Arnold - Medical Justice

• The healthcare service was not geared to meet the needs of those with serious health problems or the significant number of detainees held for longer periods for whom prolonged and uncertain detention was itself likely to be detrimental to their well being. The number of detainees has more than doubled in the last year, as had the number detained for more than 3 months, and that one woman had been detained for 18 months.
• The management arrangements for healthcare are complex ... it was not easy to establish where responsibility for specific service delivery lay.
• There are weak clinical governance systems, inadequate staff training, insufficiently detailed policies and protocols, that mental health care provision is insufficient, and that these inadequacies are compounded by the unresponsiveness of the IND to clinical concerns about an alleged history of torture or adverse medical consequences of continued detention.
• There is a growing concern among medical and other commentators that the increased use of immigration detention raises serious concerns about the mental health of detainees, particularly in cases of prolonged detention of uncertain duration.
• Independent medical opinion was not sought or adhered to and in some cases IND caseworkers, with no declared medical qualification, appeared to be making their own clinical judgements.
• There was evidence that IND caseworkers served removal directions on detainees late to pre-empt legal challenge.

• The Home Office to immediately arrangements for healthcare in detention centres to be transferred to the NHS.
• The Home Office to stop violating its own policies by routinely detaining torture survivors, children, and people with serious medical and psychological problems.
• Doctors and nurses in detention centres to make themselves familiar with, and act on national guidelines. These are required everywhere else in healthcare in the UK. Where appropriate guidelines do not exist, they should be produced as a matter of urgency.

Some times I blank out, I can't hear what anyone is saying. Other times I feel I can't escape.   They told me Manuel killed himself - perhaps death was his ultimate freedom.
Sophie Odogo (Ms A)

I was a victim of the Ugandan authorities and this inquiry shows I became a victim of the UK authorities.   When will my suffering end ?   I have waited for 9 months for this inquiry.   Every week I have reported to the Immigration Enforcement Unit - every time, and even today, I am liable to be detained again.   In Uganda the torture was quicker.   Here, living destitute, not entitled to medical treatment for the harm that has been inflicted on me, whether in detention or not, I die a little every day. The Home Office's strategy is to dehumanise, humiliate and inflict pain until we give up and go back to our country.   I have seen bookcases of reports like this ; is this the one that will bring change?
Enid Ruhango (Ms B)

For a long time Sophie was mute and she has severe memory problems.  It's as if her natural defence mechanism blocks out traumatic memories, but she also can't remember simple, non-traumatic things.   It's like her memory, her identity, has been snatched away. She is often confused and seems as though she has lost all her reference points.   Some times the blocking evaporates and she is haunted by terrible flash-backs.   Once I found her in the bushes, hiding, and petrified because she had seen a white van, and thought Yarl's Wood had come to take her back into detention. Sophie has not improved much since being released from Yarl's Wood 9 months ago.   Right now she is not capable of living independently, but we are not giving up hope.
Gill Butler, Sophie Odogo's Yarl's Wood Befriender and Litigation Friend

The inquiry highlights the existence of guidelines and policies which safeguard against ordinarily detaining victims of torture and those with serious mental illness, and that these policies are often breached.   In Ms A's case there was lot of rubber stamping going on, which provided no safeguard whatsoever, and in fact actually meant nothing at all.
Harriet Wistrich - Birnberg Peirce & Partners Solicitors

The HMICIP 's report on healthcare at Yarl's Wood IRC makes it clear that if Home Office's agencies adhered to their own criteria which exclude from detention 'those suffering from serious medical conditions and the mentally ill' and 'those where there is   independent evidence that they have   been tortured', there would be far fewer cases of neglect and abuse by their health care staff. How can the Home Office be made to account for breaching its own rules?
Dr Felicity de Zulueta