Reports the RCH doctors would simply refuse to discharge children back to detention were overblown, he said, and he expressed concern it would create a reluctance in the immigration department to send children to hospital.
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“If the staff of the Royal Children’s Hospital come to the clinical view that it is not in the interests of those children to go back into detention, then we will support them”.
A group of doctors in Australia have been praised after they refused to return refugee children back into “unsafe” detention conditions.
His colleague Dr Tom Connell, the RCH head of general medicine, said: “In children from detention, our team see children with nightmares, bed wetting, and severe behaviour problems, children from detention develop anxiety and depression”.
“It’s become so common that it’s nearly normal in children from detention to have these symptoms”.
RCH consultant paediatrician Dr Kate Thomson-Bowe said detention had life-long effects on children.
The chairman of The Royal Children’s Hospital Rob Knowles continued to support his staff and their right to share an opinion on the issue.
They argued that conditions at the offshore centres perpetuate violence against women, children, families and gay men.
AMA President, Professor Brian Owler, said today that all children being held in immigration detention centres should be immediately released to a safe environment.
“Every day children remain locked up; those children suffer and will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives”, she told reporters in Melbourne.
“That manifests itself mentally and physically with things like depressions, self-harm and profound anxiety through to things like failure to thrive – children who don’t grow and develop in a way that’s appropriate for their age because they are not in a secure environment”.
“We acknowledge the evidence that children in detention face circumstances which are very harmful to their health, their growth and their development”, vice president Stephen Parnis said.
“The detention centres are not suitable environments for the health of all detainees, but the effects on children are far worse”.
He said that if children did need to be detained, then they should be released “in weeks” at the absolute most.
Ms Batty wrote in the letter: “Those who care about violence against women and children need to care about what happens to people elsewhere under our care”.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton recognised the doctors’ protest, but upheld the party room’s stance on “stopping the boats” above all else: “I understand the concern of doctors, but the Defence and Border Force staff on our vessels who were pulling dead kids out of the water don’t want the boats to restart.”
One doctor told the Herald Sun that discharging patients back to detention was counter-productive.
Senior RCH pediatricians, including Professor Paul Monagle, have called on the federal government to end immigration detention for children.
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Victorian Health Minister Jill Hennessy tweeted in support of the RCH staff, saying they were “acting in the best interests of their patients”.
