Hundreds of asylum-seeking children initially classed as adults, report finds
Emily Harle
Tuesday, October 4, 2022
More than 200 young asylum seekers were found to be children despite initial assessments by the Home Office determining them to be "certainly" adult, new research finds.
According to Refugee Council, between January and December 2021, 233 young asylum seekers were incorrectly deemed to be adults by the Home Office. Further assessment by local authority social workers proved 219 of them to be children, it adds.
The Refugee Council currently runs an Age Disputes Project, which supports children seeking asylum in the UK involved in such disputes, providing advice and support to various children determined to be adults by the Home Office or local authority.
The project found that 94 per cent of those initially found to be adults were actually under 18 years old, which its report argues “challenges the view put forward by government that the problem is primarily that many of those who claim to be children are not”.
For children who are assessed and incorrectly found to be adults, they can be sent to live in hotels, hostel-style asylum accommodation, or former military barracks, and forced to share rooms with adults, without any further support from their local authority.
The Refugee Council’s report warns that children in this position are left "frightened and unsafe", with such placements “potentially exposing them to exploitation and abuse, mental and physical harm”.
Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council said: “When dealing with children the highest level of safeguarding must apply. Yet every day, children are getting lost in an asylum system that is making snap, careless decisions about their age. We know from our own work that this has dreadful ramifications for children who simply want to be safe and are alone, with no one to protect them."
At present, when children and young people arrive in the UK and apply for asylum, they are assessed by an immigration or Border Force officer, based on their physical appearance and demeanour.
Earlier this year, the threshold for assessing claimants based on physical appearance was changed from “25 and over” to “significantly over 18", following a Supreme Court judgement.
Following assessment, the officer can either accept the age the person claims to be, dispute the age but acknowledge there is a chance they might be a child, or determine that they are an adult upon first meeting them – those deemed to be the latter are not counted in official statistics around age-assessments by the Home Office.
If there is doubt about a person’s age they are sent to a local authority to be assessed by social workers, who will also provide placement for the person – though this does not necessarily need to be alongside other children if there are safety concerns, according to the Refugee Council.
Solomon also expressed concerns about the new reforms under the Nationality and Borders Act which enables the government to deport asylum-seekers deemed to be adults to Rwanda.
He said: “We are very worried that children are going to be sent to Rwanda, which will have devastating consequences for young people who have already suffered so much. New reforms under the Nationality and Borders Act will not help children have their age correctly identified, but instead force more young people to go through potentially harmful and unreliable procedures.”
The Home Office said that “children are not in scope to be relocated to Rwanda”.
It added that reforms to the Act aim to “make assessments more consistent and robust by using scientific measures, and creating a new National Age Assessment Board. If there is doubt whether a claimant is an adult or child, they will be referred for a local authority assessment and will be treated as a child until a decision on their age is made.”.
However, in cases where a person’s physical appearance and demeanour means they are determined to be an adult, they will be treated as such without further consideration.
The National Age Assessment Board will involve expert social workers who will conduct age assessments upon referral from a local authority.
However, the Refugee Council argued that this is “taking more control away from local authorities”, and allows invasive medical assessments to determine a claimant’s age, despite “widespread agreement amongst experts that they cannot be relied upon”.
