Joint report says Home Office’s incorrect determination of age is leaving child refugees at risk
A new report published yesterday by the Refugee Council details how hundreds of refugee and asylum-seeking children are being wrongly assessed as adults upon their arrival in the UK.
The 19-page report, Forced Adulthood: The Home Office's incorrect determination of age and how this leaves child refugees at risk, can be downloaded here. It was written jointly with the Helen Bamber Foundation and Humans for Rights Network.
As the report explains, the Home Office operates a policy whereby immigration officials at the UK border can decide the age of new arrivals based on 'physical appearance and demeanour'.
The report adds: "Multiple children have provided accounts that make clear that not only is the Home Office operating a deeply problematic policy, but it is also adopting practices outside of this policy. Organisations' direct work with children has highlighted that upon arrival individuals are asked to point to their age on a piece of paper. Those who point to seventeen or under are segregated and subjected to further scrutiny. These children are then, based on a brief glance by an immigration officer, separated into three groups."
The three groups are: 1) the immigration officer accepts the person's age; 2) the officer disputes the person's age and doubts they may be a child; and 3) the officer decides that the person's appearance and demeanour "very strongly suggests they are significantly over 18".
People in the third group are subjected to an age interview in Dover and, if deemed to be an adult by the Home Office, they are given a date of birth and sent to live in adult asylum accommodation, including hotels, or held in immigration detention.
According to the Refugee Council's report, the Home Office's flawed decision-making at the border is leading to large numbers of children being wrongly treated as adults and placed in accommodation with adult strangers.
The report uses new data collected through freedom of information (FOI) requests that found:
- From January to June 2023, 69 local authorities received 1,004 referrals to their children's services department of young people who had been sent to adult accommodation/detention.
- Of the cases when a decision on age was made/age assessment concluded (847), 57% were found to be children - meaning that in just 6 months at least 485 children had been wrongly placed in adult accommodation or detention at significant risk.
Adding in data from 2022, the Refugee Council found that the Home Office wrongly assessed more than 1,300 children to be adults over a period of 18 months from January 2022 to June 2023. The report says this figure is likely to be an underestimate because not all local authorities collect the necessary data and not all children are referred to children's services.
Many of these children, some as young as 14, were forced to share rooms with adults, the report notes.
Additional data from Humans for Rights Network also identified 15 cases where children wrongly treated as adults by the Home Office were subjected to criminalisation, with 14 spending periods of time incarcerated with adults in adult prisons. Maddie Harris, the director of Humans for Rights Network, said the children were terrified and they continue to be profoundly affected by the experience.
The report says there is a wealth of evidence to show that the system of visually determining age is not working, yet there has been limited action from the Home Office to address the concerns raised. As a result, children are missing out on the care and protection of local authorities and child protection experts, and are being left exposed to exploitation, abuse, and mental and physical harm.
While the Government has recently introduced the Immigration (Age Assessments) Regulations 2024 allowing new scientific methods for assessing a person's age under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the report says that this is not the solution to the problem. It notes that the Government's own scientific committee has made clear that these methods can only conclude whether age is 'possible' and should only be used as part of a wider social work assessment.
The report also warns that the Illegal Migration Act 2023 will allow children to be wrongly assessed as adults by the Home Office and then swiftly removed from the UK to another country without having had the chance to challenge that decision and without ever encountering social workers.
The report states: "In short, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 will do nothing to solve the problem of Home Office staff wrongly determining that a child is an adult at the border. This can only be solved by the government taking responsibility for what is clearly a flawed policy and ensuring that all children whose ages are disputed are referred to independent child protection experts for further assessment."
The report makes a number of recommendations, including calling for the establishment of an independent body to regularly analyse and oversee the numbers and quality of 'age determinations' made by the Home Office at the border.
Enver Solomon, CEO of the Refugee Council, said the report reveals an alarming child protection failure and the Government must take urgent action so every child is kept safe. Solomon told ITV News: "I think it's incredibly shocking and actually I would say it is a hidden scandal. The fact that traumatised children who have come here alone as refugees, are being told they are adults when they are actually children and what's worse is they are being placed in accommodation with adults. They are experiencing harassment, abuse, that has to be a child protection issue."
In response to the report, a Home Office spokesperson told The Independent: "Age assessments can be challenging and there is no single method which can determine a person's age with precision. Many individuals arriving in the UK who claim to be children often don't have clear evidence like an original passport or identity document to back this up. We are strengthening our age assessment process, including establishing the National Age Assessment Board and specifying scientific methods of age assessments. Measures under the Illegal Migration Act will ensure the swift removal of individuals who have been assessed as adults and who have no right to remain in the UK."