Age disputes: a Young Roots priority
Lisa Matthews, Policy and Campaigns Manager, 25th April 2024
“I couldn’t understand why my age was not accepted. It is difficult to explain the feeling of having your identity questioned, especially as I know my mother wouldn’t have lied to me about my age” Young person
The ages of children arriving in the UK to seek safety are often questioned by the authorities designated to protect them. The disbelief of a child’s age has a huge effect on them – on the systems they enter into, on the services they receive, and on their wellbeing. Children who are wrongly deemed to be adults are placed in unsafe adult asylum accommodation with strangers. They are channelled into the adult asylum system, without the extra provision which children are entitled to in this complicated and high-stakes process. They find it much harder to access education. They are not able to receive care from the local authority as children, and do not benefit from the support that care leavers receive which leads to long-lasting negative impacts as they struggle to navigate the adult world with little support.
The enormous impact on young people, and the grave consequences of determining a child’s age incorrectly, means it is a priority issue for us at Young Roots.
At Young Roots, we have a lot of experience in supporting children through the age dispute process – and successfully getting children recognised as the children they are. But we don’t want to have to be doing this. At heart, the solution to the problem of age disputes is not complicated. The person most often found to be correct about their age is the child themselves: we need to believe children. We need fewer and fairer age assessments.
On the rare occasion when an age assessment process is deemed to be necessary, the process can be improved by using a trauma-informed and holistic approach that can allow professionals to build an authentic picture of a young person’s age. This is exactly the approach we use when supporting young people going through age determination processes in our partnership with the Helen Bamber Foundation, and we are excited to announce that we are launching a new report that draws on our learning from that approach, and from our long collective experience of supporting young people going through age disputes.
Our joint report, “They Made Me Feel Like Myself”, shows what this can look like, and how this approach can mean that children are less harmed by the process.
Join us on 15th May to hear more about our report, and about new research from Helen Bamber Foundation clinical psychologists on the mental health impact of age disputes – a topic that has received far too little exploration thus far.