A coalition of refugee aid groups has called for the Home Office to ax the organization, claiming it is putting hundreds of children at risk.
The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, which includes more than 100 organisations, including the Refugee Council, Barnardo’s and the NSPCC, has published a report analyzing the performance of the Home Office’s National Age Assessment Board (NAAB), set up in March 2023 to determine the age of young people newly seeking asylum in the UK.
The board employs more than 50 social workers to carry out the assessments, but says some children are “ready to get them”.
The report found that in some cases the process led to children’s mental health deteriorating, leading to self-harm and suicidal thoughts, and that Home Office age assessment was “more serious and traumatic” than a comparable experience with a local authority social worker.
If children are mistaken for adults, they are often placed in an adult dormitory with unrelated people, putting them at risk. Some adults are in prisons after committing crimes such as driving a dinghy on their journey to the UK.
The report cites the case of a boy who was 15 years old on arrival, but the Home Office estimated his age to be seven years older than his true age and charged him with offenses related to his arrival. His age was determined to be last year and the criminal charges against him were dropped.
The body was set up by the previous government due to concerns about adults “gaming the system” by pretending to be children. However, Freedom of Information data reveals that many local authority social workers initially declared as adults by the Home Office have been confirmed as children after detailed assessments.
Some judges also found NAAB’s evaluation process flawed, criticizing it as adversarial, contrary to existing guidance and lacking objectivity, the report said.
It raised concerns that it “risked influencing professional judgment undermining the objectivity required by the Code of Conduct”.
The Independent Chief Inspector for Borders and Immigration noted concerns about the NAAB in a report last summer, while a report commissioned by the Home Office by the National Center for Social Research was largely positive, although its sample was small and the evidence mainly came from Home Office and local authorities.
The consortium’s report called for the NAAB to be abolished and local authorities instead given money to increase their capacity to carry out age assessments of their social workers. It said the board would have to have independent oversight if it was allowed to continue and respect local authority decisions to accept some young people as children without a full age assessment.
The Refugee Council’s senior policy analyst, Kama Petrukzhenko, said: “The NAAB was set up to bring consistency to age checks, but evidence shows it is putting children at risk. Courts have found its assessments wrong, delays are common and local social workers’ judgments are often overruled.
“With the NAAB sitting inside the Home Office, immigration regulation and protection is unclear. Children need independent, child-centred, trauma-informed assessments led by local authorities, not adversarial processes that compound existing problems.”
Maddy Harris, founder and director of the Humans for Rights Network, described the NAAB assessments as “interrogative, hostile and scary” for the children it supports.
“Our view is that NAAB often starts from an individual’s adult status, searching for evidence that fits this narrative,” she said.
The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
