We need a better way to assess the age of lone asylum seeking children

Imagine what it’s like to walk into the complete unknown alone.  Terrifying – and even more so for a child.

Often the young people we work with arrive in Scotland or other areas in the UK without any identification or documentation. They may have never held an ID card or passport, and may not know their date of birth or age. They are confused, frightened and some are told by the people who brought them here (agents or traffickers) to state a set age and story, often less harrowing than their real story. Particularly worrying are young girls and women who are told to pretend to be over 18 when in fact they are children.

Age assessment is necessary; getting it right so important

It is important that we quickly assess age to protect children and young people; if they are not identified as children they are routed through the adult process, housed with adults, miss schooling and crucial support - and may even face detention.

Unaccompanied asylum seeking young people face confusion and scrutiny

Young people immediately face a lot of questions about their identity and must prove their age if they do not have identification.  And even on the rare occasion that they do have documentation, it may be treated with suspicion, deemed counterfeit and sent away for testing.

Proving identity and age is a difficult and problematic process

If you have ever travelled abroad, lost your luggage and all your identification documents, you know how inconvenient and stressful it can be to replace them.

But the young people we work with cannot simply make a call to their family to seek help or photocopies of documentation; they often do not know where family members are or if they are even alive.

Contacting their local Embassy is not an option either because they have often escaped war, persecution, abuse or exploitation at the hands of authorities and consequently have a huge fear of officials.

Often their birth has not been recorded, for example in Somalia children’s births are not recorded officially; they are to all intents and purposes living ghosts and consequently subject to an age assessment in the UK.

There is no magic formula to determine a child’s age

Age assessment is an art rather than a science - and an extremely difficult judgement.  The difference between someone who is 17 and three quarters and 18 and three days is indiscernible.  Yet this has major repercussions for asylum seeking young people in terms of how they will be dealt with by the authorities.

It is particularly difficult to assess the age of children and young people who have suffered unimaginable abuse and torture, been exposed to harsh weather conditions, suffered malnutrition, torture or worked from as young as five. There is no accurate medical procedure yet invented which can accurately determine age. 

X-rays of bone and teeth still provide a wide margin either side of the estimated age and the data sets used to assess age are still largely based on western statistics and averages.

Assessing a child’s age stirs contentious and difficult issues

There are a huge number of very contentious and difficult issues wrapped up in age assessment.   Scottish Refugee Council has long called for a holistic, standardised age assessment that gauges age, but also looks at young people’s needs and vulnerability to ensure they get the best possible help.

There are many different practices taking place across Scotland.  There is no Scottish case law on age assessment which sets precedence for guidance on age assessment; social workers in Scotland have simply gained experience through conducting the assessments. 

Young people are unaware of the purpose and implications of assessment

During the development of the guardianship pilot project we are conducting with the children’s charity Aberlour, we found that young people didn’t know if or why they were being assessed or the ramifications of the decision.

Very few understood their appeal rights and some hadn’t understood that they had been assessed, found to be over eighteen and would therefore be treated as an adult.  

Concerning mental and physical health difficulties, signs of having been trafficked and obvious vulnerability issues only added to the problematic nature of the assessment.

Severe stress and consequences of a wrong assessment

Because there is no Asylum Screening Unit here in Scotland, young people thought to be 18 years old or over are treated as adults and must go to Croydon alone to claim asylum.  Worryingly it is nearly impossible to find out if they arrived safely.  It is also very frustrating when a young person has been assessed in England and wrongly deemed to be an adult – only later to be found to in fact be a child and subject to a further assessment in Scotland. Conversely it is very important that adults are not placed within children’s units or placed in schools.

Time to change and improve the way children are treated and assessed

Attitudinal, cultural, legal, political and social welfare issues are all embroiled in the issue of age assessment. But it’s time to look at these issues and provide a practical tool and guidance to assist social workers who lead in these assessments.

In collaboration with Glasgow City Council, we have been developing and  piloting a new tool and set of guidance in Glasgow that will help to determine the age of children who are seeking asylum alone, and do not have a birth certificate.

The tool provides a template to assist social workers to assess age on a number of factors, and to formally request contributions from other professionals to weigh the evidence and come to a conclusion. It is embedded in comprehensive guidance that prompts the social workers to consider multiple factors, for example country guidance information and trafficking indicators.

A robust, holistic assessment considers a range of issues

Together with the training that we hope to be able to offer shortly, we feel it provides a very useful framework for social workers to use their professional judgement to assess on a number of issues, including vulnerability which contributes to a robust, holistic assessment of a person’s age.

If successful, we hope it will be used by social workers across Scotland.