It’s no joke — the world’s biggest security company is training immigration staff in “Keeping Children Safe”.
The world’s biggest security company, G4S, has been paid to train thousands of UK Border Agency staff in “Keeping Children Safe” and continues to do so despite its own record of harming people in its care, and its apparent lack of any formal accreditation in such training.
The Home Office has confirmed to OurKingdom that G4S has trained some 7,800 UK Border Agency staff in safeguarding children — “particularly within the Border Force who may come into contact with children entering and leaving the country”.
The children may have been trafficked, sexually exploited, be facing removal from Britain or they may be incarcerated in two government detention facilities run for profit by G4S — Tinsley House at Gatwick Airport and Cedars in the Sussex village of Pease Pottage.
The Border Agency’s cosy arrangement with its favourite commercial contractor appears to have escaped the notice of its so-called Independent Family Returns Panel, which is supposed to advise on children’s welfare under the Coalition Government’s new child detention arrangements, and the Home Affairs Committee, whose duties include scrutinising Border Agency performance. Children’s charity Barnardo’s, which works alongside G4S at the Cedars family lock-up, and has vowed to “speak out” and even withdraw their services “if policy and practice fall short of safeguarding the welfare, dignity and respect of families”, has failed to blow the whistle on this unorthodox arrangement. Continue reading “G4S teaches UK Border Agency how to care for children”