Helen Bamber Foundation welcomes the scrapping of x-rays to assess the age of children seeking asylum, but remains concerned at the use of visual assessments
The Helen Bamber Foundation (HBF) welcomes the government’s decision to scrap the use of ‘scientific methods’ to assess the age of unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the UK. Described by experts as ‘at best an educated guess’, x-raying children to decide their age is inaccurate, expensive and potentially harmful.
However, we are concerned about the government’s proposals to use artificial intelligence (AI) and facial recognition technologies to assess age instead. Existing evidence has found that AI can be even less accurate and more biased than human decisions when judging a person’s age — with similar patterns of errors. Today’s report from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration highlights that a decade of concerns around the Home Office’s “’perfunctory’ visual assessments” of age remain unaddressed. Given the harm that has been caused to children wrongly treated as adults, it is vital that the Home Office stops looking for ‘quick fixes’ and ensures that children are safeguarded.
For years now, HBF has collected data, which the government has failed to do itself, on the number of children wrongly treated as adults after a visual assessment of age at the border.
Earlier this month we published new data, collected via Freedom of Information requests, for 2024 showing that:
- 91 local authorities in England and Scotland received 1,338 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 (1,224), 56% were found to be children - meaning that in 2024 at least 681 children had been wrongly placed in adult accommodation or detention at significant risk.
The actual number is very likely to be significantly higher because not all local authorities have access to, or will share, the relevant data, and many children don’t get the support they need to challenge the Home Office’s decision in the first place.
While the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration did not examine “the reliability or otherwise” of the Home Office approach to assessing age, his report highlights a number of problems with decision-making on age at the border, including lack of cultural awareness; decisions that rely on generic physical characteristics; young people feeling pressured into signing a document stating that they are an adult; and ‘patchy and unreliable data’. The report laments the lack of learning from decisions that are subsequently overturned by local authority social workers. It recommends better training, guidance and quality standards. We support these findings.
Kamena Dorling, Director of Policy and co-chair of the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, said:
“Every year hundreds of unaccompanied children seeking protection are incorrectly determined by border officials to be adults based on a cursory visual assessment – over 600 in 2024 alone. Not only are they then forced to share rooms with strangers in adult asylum accommodation, many are now also ending up in adult prisons after being prosecuted for illegal arrival. The government has done nothing to address the harm being caused to children and refuses to even acknowledge this significant safeguarding scandal. The concerns raised in the Chief Inspector’s report show that, alongside better training and guidance, we still need urgent change to the flawed policy of officials assessing age on sight."
Press contact: kennith.rosario@helenbamber.org or media@helenbamber.org
NOTE TO EDITOR:
The Helen Bamber Foundation (HBF) is a specialist clinical and human rights charity that works with survivors of trafficking, torture and other forms of extreme human cruelty. Our multidisciplinary and clinical team provides a bespoke Model of Integrated Care for survivors which includes medico-legal documentation of physical and psychological injuries; specialist therapeutic care; a medical advisory service; a counter-trafficking programme; housing and welfare advice; legal protection advice; and community integration activities and services. HBF co-chairs the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, a coalition of over 100 organisations working to promote and protect the rights of young refugees and migrants.
HBF’s latest briefings on age assessments can be found here: