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Lucy Bannerman reports on slavery in a modern guise

The Home Office is drawing up plans to forcibly repatriate up to 500 children to Vietnam as part of a programme that could see thousands of minors sent back to an uncertain future in the countries where they were born. Documents seen by the Guardian reveal that the Immigration and Nationality Directorate is planning to remove failed asylum seeking children who have no family in Britain, beginning with a trial run of Vietnamese children.

More staff training on the cultures of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children would help any expansion of a project that transferred children from the care of Kent Council to authorities in Greater Manchester according to an ADSS report.

The children of asylum seekers can spend months locked up with their parents in detention centres

The children's commissioner has called for the introduction of independent advisers to help children seeking asylum in Scotland without a parent. Kathleen Marshall's comments came after a new study said unaccompanied children had been given unsuitable accommodation in homeless hostels.

More than 2,000 children of asylum-seekers are locked up every year, leaving them suffering depression, nightmares and eating problems, a coalition of campaign groups has warned.

A leading children's charity has accused the government of breaching international law by locking up an increasing number of young asylum seekers unnecessarily and arbitrarily.