What can visitors do?

• Inform your coordinator if you meet someone in detention who you think might be a child. You need to determine whether a referral should be made immediately to the Refugee Council’s Age Dispute Project.

• Inform your coordinator if the person you visit or any other person you meet is at risk of harm, discloses to you that they were tortured or if they feel suicidal.

• Inform your coordinator if the person that you visit or a friend in detention tells you, or gets a message to you, that they are being held in segregation.

• Direct people you are visiting in detention to where they can find guidance and instructions relevant to their general treatment in detention/prison and their entitlements. You can provide hard copies of guidance documents where the person you visit wishes.

• Take some time to familiarise yourself with Home Office and Prison Service guidance for staff and contractors as background reading. This will enable you to better discern situations where the person you visit is not being treated the way that you think they should be and raise your concerns with your group or with AVID.

• For further reading on the dynamic nature of vulnerability and risk/protective factors in detention, an extensive research project was carried out by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) into vulnerability in detention, across several European countries. This research demonstrates the complexity, subjectiveness, and dynamic nature of vulnerability, and how otherwise resilient people may become vulnerable due to the negative physical and mental effects of detention. This is useful reading to better understand how the person you are visiting might be impacted by their time in detention as well as the protective factors that might be a resource to them .You can find a full list of the personal, social and environmental factors in JRS’s report which is available here: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4ec269f62.html.