A scheme to encourage failed asylum seekers to leave Scotland voluntarily, rather than through enforced detention, began yesterday.

After years of negative publicity about its policy of dawn raids , the UK Border Agency, working with the Scottish government and Glasgow City Council, devised the Family Returns scheme, which it described as “the most humane way” to persuade unsuccessful immigrants to return home.

Families with children whose applications to live in the UK were rejected will be asked to move into designated flats, where council staff will help them prepare to leave.

The £125,000 pilot scheme, which will run in Glasgow, is the result of changes brought in after a public outcry over a series of dawn raids and detentions.

In one well-publicised case in Drumchapel, Glasgow,seven teenagers known as the Glasgow Girls, with support from the local community, mounted a successful attempt to highlight dawn raids. Their efforts became the subject of a documentary film.

In 2008, figures show that 96 families, with 124 children, were held in Dungavel Detention Centre, in Lanarkshire, before leaving the UK. In 2007, 87 families were held.

That number dropped in the first five months of 2009, with about 60 per cent of families now being persuaded to leave Scotland voluntarily.

It is hoped that under the scheme, the number detained in Dungavel will fall to zero.Phil Taylor, regional director of the UK Border Agency, acknowledged that about one dawn raid still takes place on average once a month, when all other avenues were exhausted, but said most family detentions took place in the agency's offices. He explained that the majority of families were now persuaded to return to their own countries without being taken into detention.

He said: “We all believe that is it much better that those families who are here illegally having been found by the courts not to need our protection should go home under our own steam.

“That's why I'm delighted that we've been able to work with our partners here in Scotland to build on the voluntary return scheme already in operation with this pilot project, which I hope will be a success and reduce the need for enforced returns of families.

“We only detain families as a last resort when they refuse to return home, despite the courts confirming that they do not require protection.

“This project is a small step along the way and it is likely that some families who fail to return home voluntarily will still have to be detained and their departure enforced. However, we are all committed to making that number as small as we possibly can and if we can eliminate the need to enforce family removals, so much the better.”

Under the Family Returns scheme, around five failed asylum seeker families at any one time will be moved into open access flats in the Kinning Park area of Glasgow. A central plank of the policy is that social work staff will visit them regularly to help them plan their exit from Scotland “with freedom and dignity”.

The children will be allowed to continue at their existing schools until departure.

John Donaldson, head of immigration and emergency services at Glasgow City Council, said: “This is the most humane way to return the families to their own country. We don't believe it's good for children to be in detention, and this scheme will enable us to engage with asylum seekers.”

Mr Donaldson said families whose appeals to stay had failed would be asked to move into the flats. “We feel it's important that they move - it's the mindset of moving towards home. We give them time to orientate themselves and disengage the children from school.”

He said: “We have got to underline to them that we don't think detention is good for families, and that being involved in a voluntary return doesn't stop them reappplying to come back under managed migration at some time in the future - but if detention is enforced they are debarred in the future.

“We want to make a reasonable success of returning them with some dignity. One of the things we have got to recognise is that people come to the UK and build a lot of hope and status into coming here, and being told they have to go back is very crushing.”

To qualify for the scheme, families must have at least one minor dependant, no history of violent behaviour and no significant medical problems.

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