Lisa Nandy, chair of the Refugee Children's Consortium, said the government did not set any clear goals for the Alternative to Detention pilot at Millbank, Kent, while an evaluation by consultancy Tribal did not gather the right information to inform future policy and practice.
Through Alternative to Detention, the UK Border Agency (UKBA) aimed to encourage failed asylum-seeker families to return voluntarily to their country of origin.
Families were moved to the Millbank residential unit to consider their options. The unit was run like a hostel and children were placed in Kent schools.
Nandy described Alternative to Detention as "the first serious attempt to do something much more humane in the asylum process". But her own evaluation pointed to problems throughout the project, which ran from November 2007 to October 2008.
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