Lead professionals for asylum seeker children facing deportation in Scotland

Lead professionals will be appointed to oversee the interests of children of failed asylum-seeking families due to be deported in Scotland, under plans announced by the Home Office yesterday.

Their role will include doing enhanced checks of Home Office staff dealing directly with children being removed from the country with their families.

The Home Office said that it would work “openly and collaboratively” with the lead professionals alongside Scottish health, education, welfare and police services when carrying out removals.

The Home Office is shortly to publish a review of best practice on removals of failed asylum-seeking families in the UK that draws on practice in Scotland.