Case study: The Dover Detainee Visitor Group continue with core services and it is extending its impact.

We are actively contributing to the Detention Forum in their work on policy making/influencing, for which we wrote a briefing paper for parliamentarians for their meeting this year on issues faced after detention. We have also written a report presented to the Legal Services Commission highlighting the negative aspects of legal representation under exclusive legal firms’ contracts. Examples of our services follow:

A female ex-detainee in London, who had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, telephoned us because she was about to be made homeless by her local authority. We liaised with her community care lawyers to ensure continuity of care / A male had been released from detention without enough heart medication – we referred him to Doctor of the Worlds’ ‘Project: London’, who gave him an emergency prescription and helped him to register with a G.P/ A visitor informed us he suspected his detainee had mental health issues, with the detainee’s permission we referred him to Medical Justice and he was diagnosed with brain damage. He is now released.