In a first of its kind research study in the UK, clinical psychologists at the Helen Bamber Foundation have found that the age assessment process has a profound and harmful impact on the mental health of unaccompanied children seeking asylum.
Our new report reveals that child refugees who come to the UK alone are facing harassment, abuse and criminalisation as a result of being wrongly treated as adults and placed in accommodation with adult strangers.
The government has been pushing the use of X-ray and MRI scans to find out the age of young people seeking asylum. NGOs and medical bodies have raised serious concerns that these so-called ‘scientific methods’ are not just inaccurate but potentially harmful.
A new briefing from HBF, Asylum Aid and Humans for Rights Network reveals that the Home Office is incorrectly treating hundreds of children seeking asylum as adults, based on a short visual assessment on arrival in the UK, and placing them alone and at significant risk in unsupervised accommodation and in immigration detention.
Over 100 charities from the refugee and children’s sectors wrote to the Prime Minister on January 26th 2023 to express their grave concern about separated children seeking asylum going missing from Home Office hotels. The children are suspected of being exploited and are accommodated outside of the UK’s child welfare framework which applies to all children, regardless of their immigration status.
