Proposed changes to National Age Assessment Board a threat to children's rights - BASW

Local authorities could lose the ability to make their own decisions over age-disputed asylum seekers under proposals being considered by the Home Office.

BASW has warned if implemented it “will have significant consequences on children’s rights” and the ability of local authorities to uphold them.

The news comes as Home Office data revealed young asylum seekers entering the UK are more than twice as likely to be assessed as adults by immigration officers as they are by social workers.

In the past eight months only a third (1,363) of 4,320 initial age decisions made by immigration officials assessed new arrivals to be children.

But in the same period 1,756 completed age assessments carried out by social workers identified 68 per cent, or 1,198 individuals, as children.

The threat to local authority autonomy over decision making comes under proposed enhanced powers to the controversial National Age Assessment Board (NAAB).

The agency was set up by the Home Office in 2023 and employs social workers to make decisions in disputes over age with people seeking asylum.

Currently local authorities ultimately decide if a young person qualifies to be supported as a child, even if NAAB has assessed them as an adult.

However, an amendment to the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 introduced in the Kings Speech would see decisions made by NAAB as binding.

The Home Office claims the change is being considered because local authorities “vary considerably in their experience of conducting age assessments”.

This, it claims, “could lead to an individual assessed as an adult by the NAAB being placed in a care system with vulnerable children”.

However, BASW said: “The narrative is entirely focused on ‘stopping adults from accessing children’s services’, with no reference at all to protecting children who are misclassified as adults.

“This messaging reinforces that the driver here is immigration control, not safeguarding.” 

BASW said the proposal would “effectively override Children Act duties”, and stressed court rulings have shown NAAB decisions to be inconsistent and too often fail to consider vulnerability.

Campaigners state many children from countries such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea do not have passports or birth certificates, either because they have never had them or because they have been destroyed, lost or taken.

In an independent report last year, the chief inspector of borders and immigration highlighted concerns about "perfunctory" age assessments by Home Office staff, uncovering practices based only on a brief visual assessment of “appearance and demeanour”. 

In addition, the report revealed young people felt under pressure to sign documents stating they were adults. 

The Home Office claims the proposal to make NAAB decisions binding will “protect local authorities from being legally challenged directly and provide a more definitive route to the establishment of a person’s age”.

But BASW disagrees, claiming it sidelines local safeguarding knowledge, would weaken corporate parenting and implies local authorities “don’t know what they’re doing”.

Sam Baron, BASW’s interim chief executive, said: “With every further move that the Home Office makes on age assessments, it becomes clearer that for them, age assessments are for the purposes of immigration enforcement. 

“There is no reason that the NAAB should ever have been created when local authorities are more than capable of carrying out age assessments with support and training. It was planned to be an immigration function from the start, and this latest statement confirms it by further removing autonomy from local authorities. 

“The home secretary continues to lose appeals on age assessments with rulings describing NAAB assessments as poor quality. Local authorities should think twice before entrusting the Home Office with these assessments and should fight back against this move to further minimise the role of local authorities. 

“BASW believes the NAAB should be disbanded and the millions of pounds spent on it should be redistributed to local authorities.”

BASW has previously urged social workers not to join NAAB, believing responsibility for age assessing asylum seekers should remain with local authority social workers.

It maintains outsourcing this function to a centralised agency within the Home Office risks “political priorities intruding on professional objectivity”.

Despite assurances by the Home Office of NAAB’s autonomy, an Immigration and Asylum tribunal last month judged they were “not distinct entities”.

Baron added: “The courts are now in agreement with BASW that the National Age Assessment Board is an immigration function, not a safeguarding one.”  

AI age assessment

BASW has also criticised plans to start trialing AI age assessment tools at UK's borders from next year in Dover.

It maintains "the social work method" is the best way for determining age rather than "fallible" AI technology.

Facial age estimation technology cannot detect the impact of significant trauma on a young person, said the association, or when they have experienced developmental delay or been malnourished, or are suffering illness which can make them look older and "toughened".

Baron said: "Assessing the ages of migrants is a complex process which social workers are best placed to do. This important task should not be open to shortcuts through artificial intelligence, especially as the pitfalls of getting it wrong can lead to major safeguarding risks."