A senior Kent Professor is one of those calling for an immediate end to children being held in immigration removal centres.

Cornelius Katona, a consultant psychiatrist in the Kent and Medway Mental Health Partnership Trust, says it can be "very traumatic".

Prof. Katona's calls are echoed by The Royal Colleges of Paediatrics and Child Health, saying the detention of children and their families in the centres caused "significant harm" and should be ended without delay.

Around 1,000 children are detained in centres across the country and the Royal Colleges and the UK Faculty of Public Health says the centres should be run by the NHS not the Home Office.

Mr Katona said: "In a lot of cases, children are detained for a while more than once and certainly for me, seeing parents subject to this process, one of the things that is very striking about the people who have been through a period of sudden onset administrative detention is that they are terrified of this happening again and even more so for their children, who often are in a long term state of terror of being detained or re-detained.

"That experience of detention has re-awakened the experience of previous trauma in the country or countries from which they came."

The report has been welcomed by the Children's Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, who called earlier this year for an end to detention of children in the centres.

He said: "I know that the Government is working towards improving the treatment of children caught up in the immigration system and I welcome the commitments made so far, particularly those to develop community-based alternatives to detention.

"But I remain deeply concerned with the number of children who are detained

for immigration purposes and the length of time which some are held."