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Focused age assessment interviews can be a useful technique for assessing age. Interviews of this kind have been used in Australia in a range of different ways since late 2010.

Australia's Immigration Detention Centres are contradictory to the human rights of the child. The Immigration Detention experience is extremely harmful to children and has effects of traumatisation and re-traumatisation during the Detention experience and continuing after release. Concerning alternatives to Detention, the present options are also not geared towards the best interest of the child.

CARAD is a group of volunteers, supporters and donors formed from January 2000, in an attempt to meet some of the range of essential and urgent needs of refugees who reach Perth, following assessment of their claim while in a detention centre. We have now met in excess of 2,000 refugees, not all of whom remain in WA, and have provided them with compassionate, practical assistance. We estimate that there are about 1000 individual volunteers, supporters and donors affiliated with CARAD.

1. INTRODUCTION 2. HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLICATIONS FOR MINORS OF AUSTRALIA'S MANDATORY DETENTION 3. ADDITIONAL ISSUES FOR UNACCOMPANIED MINORS IN DETENTION 4. ALTERNATIVES TO DETENTION 5. CONCLUSION

The immigration status that results in the detention of children under Australian law also affects their entitlements to various services on release from detention, after they have been recognised as refugees. As discussed in Chapter 6 on Australia's Detention Policy, most children detained in immigration detention facilities for long periods are detained because they arrive in Australia without a visa (unauthorised arrivals). More than 90 per cent of those children are subsequently found to be refugees and are therefore released on temporary protection visas (TPVs).

This submission aims to highlight a number of issues for children in immigration detention arising from the Department of Human Services' (DHS) involvement in child protection, health service provision to children and their families, settlement support and care of unattached minors.

This paper contains a comparison of the policies and procedures of Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada for dealing with children as asylum seekers. This comparison reveals two main differences.

The Association of Major Charitable Organisations welcomes the opportunity to provide a submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention.

This submission addresses some of the issues and questions raised in the background papers prepared by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) and in relation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and its 1967 Protocol (the Refugee Convention). The conclusions drawn in this submission arise out of the experiences of staff and members of the Uniting Church in Australia. We do acknowledge that the evidence presented here is therefore anecdotal.

This discussion paper briefly discusses federal laws which exclude same-sex couples from accessing financial and work-related entitlements. The paper discusses the following areas of federal law:

This submission has been prepared by staff and law students from the Southern Communities Advocacy Legal and Education Service Inc (SCALES). The students worked on this submission as part of a course offered through Murdoch University School of Law in Advanced Clinical Legal Education. This unit is conducted at the School's Law Clinic - SCALES which is also a community legal centre that provides free legal advice, information and representation to low income people living in the Kwinana, Rockingham and Mandurah areas.

The Commission received 1937 submissions during the Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st century project submission period (17 September 2008 to 28 February 2009). An additional 95 submissions were received after the formal deadline.