Age assessments have huge consequences

We need better decision-making, and fewer of them

Lisa Matthews, Policy and Campaigns Mananger, 14th October 2024

“I was told that they don’t believe my age and they gave me an age that makes me an adult. It was so strange to me to have a conversation and argue about my age, let alone having to go to court for it later... 

I was so terrified that it was difficult for me to even tell my story and communicate my problems and feelings. Having to argue with adults about my age in a new country was so traumatising that I lost trust in people. I remember I was crying all of the time, I was lost and confused and seeing no hope in anything.” 

-Young person at Young Roots

Many young people we work with at Young Roots are told that they are not the age they know they are. Incorrectly assessing a child to be an adult can have catastrophic consequences with regards to access to care, their health, education, safety, development, trust in professionals, protection status and life chances.  Through our extensive experience supporting young asylum-seekers and refugees, we noticed that there is a wide variation in methods and quality of decision-making in age assessments experienced by the young people we support. As a result, we partnered with Immigration Social Work Services and Public Law Project to research precisely how age is being determined by local authorities. 

Age assessments 

When young people arrive in the UK to seek safety, their age may be questioned, especially in the absence of formal identification. They may be interviewed and assessed by different professionals trying to decide how old they are, including by the Home Office, by Social Workers working for local authorities, and - since the introduction of the National Age Assessment Board – by Social Workers employed by the Home Office. 

The type of age assessment used by local authorities in the UK (the focus in our Good Decision-Making in Age Assessments report) is called a Merton assessment. Merton assessments involve a series of interviews with an age-disputed young person, conducted by trained Social Workers, that seek to determine their age based on factors such as physical appearance, social history, development and family history. 

The report

Good Decision-Making in Age Assessments provides a snapshot of how age assessment decisions are made across England, complete with trends, flaws, good practice and suggested improvements. Our analysis found that practice varied greatly, and too often the sample assessments that were examined lacked fairness, nuance and good reasoning. 

Our report offers a range of recommendations based on the research findings to help improve age assessment decision-making, support Social Workers to produce better quality assessments, and enable a fairer experience for young people undergoing this process. 

Age assessments should be about child protection 

Social Workers are experts on child protection and welfare and in this job, demonstrate the skills and experiences to navigate sensitive and consequential decisions for children and families. The recommendations in this report support improving practice by implementing these wider Social Care skills, experiences and standards in age assessments, in line with other areas of Social Care. 

Age assessment is primarily a matter of children’s social care. This means, therefore, that it should sit with the Department for Education like other matters of children’s social care, and yet, since the Home Office’s intervention, age assessment is increasingly viewed as a matter of immigration control.  

We believe that politics should be kept out of child protection, and that Social Workers should be supported to protect the safety and best interests of children - our report identifies key ways to do this.