How You Can Help Safeguard Children in Calais - from Stella Creasy MP

Click here to watch this short video 

The French Government have confirmed their intention to evict the whole of the Calais refugee camp- including over 1,000 children - by the end of October 2016. Please join our fight to safeguard them. 

Right now our Government has the paperwork for 387 of these children who we believe have the right to be in the UK legally. Yet still they fail to act. Working across political parties we are proposing the Dub II law - an amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill which will force the Government to protect these children. Read more about this law here. 

Here are four actions you can take to help these children right now:

1. Please consider making a donation to pay for mobile phone credit so we can keep in touch with them if they are evicted, and buy suitcases with wheels so they can try to keep any belongings they have. You can do so online here. 
2. Please ask your MP to support the Dubs II amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill. You can find a suggested text below to use and if you get a positive or negative response please let us know!
3. Please contact members of the House of Lords online to ask them to support Dubs II amendment - you can find a list of twitter handles here
4. Please share this email with family and friends around the country to ask them to join us acting to help child refugees. I'm sending you this email as you have been in touch about how to help our campaign and shown support for my work to help child refugees - if you know others who would like to receive these updates on this campaign please ask them to email me to be added to this mailing list. 

With your help we can ensure no child is left in the Calais Camps by Christmas. 

Stella Creasy MP
Labour and Cooperative MP for Walthamstow

___________________________

Suggested text for contacting MPs

Dear

As my MP I’m writing to you to ask you to pledge to safeguard child refugees in Europe.

The Dubs Amendment was passed by parliament in March 2016- it committed us to taking our fair share of the refugee children in Europe who have fled persecution. Yet six months on not a single child has come here under its protection – now there are over 1000 children alone in the Calais camp, which the French Government has said it will evict by the end of October 2016. These children live in tents with strangers, begging for food and hiding from traffickers for want of someone to process their paperwork. The French asylum system has ground to a halt- without action by the UK these children face a very uncertain future.

The Home Office currently has the paperwork for 387 children currently in the Calais refugee camps who have the right to be in the UK legally under either international law or the Dubs amendment. That’s why a cross party group of MPs has tabled the Dubs II amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill to require the Government to put in place a safeguarding process for these children and so protect their welfare. This will be debated in the Lords in October 2016 and will then come to House of Commons for approval.

There is not a moment to lose in the fight to protect these children. When the French evicted part of the camp earlier this year, 100 children went missing. With your help we can ensure these children have a better future. Please let me know if you will pledge your support for this campaign- or let the office of Stella Creasy MP know if you wish to cosign this amendment.

Thank you for your support for this important campaign.