This week a new report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) found appalling failings in the Home Office’s age assessment process. At the same time, the Home Office announced they would attempt to start using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assess children’s ages.
At GMIAU we recently published our own report on the experiences of children whose age was disputed at the border and who have been sent to adult asylum accommodation. The initial age decisions made by Home Office officials soon after children arrive in the UK are causing untold damage to vulnerable children. The interactions themselves, often described as hostile and confusing, and the consequences – being sent to asylum hotels where children feel deeply unsafe and isolated – combine to retraumatise young people and make them feel unsafe in the UK.
The Chief Inspector said: “Over the years, and again during this inspection, I have listened to young people who felt disbelieved and dismissed by the Home Office, whose hopes have been crushed, and whose mental health has suffered.”
AI age assessments are not even the beginning of an adequate answer to the safeguarding crisis that the Home Office has created, and that it now refuses to acknowledge. We need action.
Key findings of the ICIBI report
Inspectors witnessed first hand the interactions at the UK border that lead to children being wrongly treated as adults. We know that well over half of these decisions are wrong: they are consistently overturned at a rate of over 50% by social workers who are better qualified to assess age.
The ICIBI noted:
A culture of disbelief
- Of all people who claimed to be children arriving in the UK in 2024, a huge 41% were assessed to be adults, meaning they were sent to adult accommodation. We know that hundreds of this number will later be found to be children who should never have experienced this. An additional 15%, according to the Home Office, “admitted” they were an adult during the process.
- That 15% figure is a concern for both us and the ICIBI. We know children have been asked to sign a form saying they are an adult, and even pressured into doing so. Some did not understand what they were signing, and most did not understand that this would later be used against them. The ICIBI also highlights that the use of the “Statement of Age” forms cannot continue with its current lack of clarity.
A place of hostility
- One young person told us that “the environment looks hostile” at Kent Intake Unit, where most of these initial age decisions are made. Inspectors agreed, describing rooms with backless wooden benches and “posters with messaging about people “arriving in the UK illegally from a safe country” being “banned from settling, obtaining citizenship or re-entering the UK for life”. There was no information visible relating to the age assessment process, why it was required or what it would entail.”
- As well as a lack of visible information, there was no interpretation available at KIU, making it even harder for children to understand what was going on.
- Like the young people who we spoke to, the ICIBI reported behaviour from interviewing officials as “adversarial” and “like an interrogation”. Inspectors witnessed Home Office officials laughing and joking, and making comments to each other about the child, while interviewing children who did not speak English and could not understand them.
- As we know, the outcome of these interactions is the difference between children being rightfully treated as children, or being treated as adults and put at severe risk of harm and exploitation.
Poor decision-making
- The ICIBI noticed “unreliable and inconsistent conclusions that were drawn from demeanour”, and officials “citing generic physical characteristics as indicators of age and failing to take into account the young person’s individual circumstance”.
- Our report raised concerns about racism and stereotypes being rife in the age assessment process, leading to adultification. The ICIBI heard Home Office officials using racialised stereotypes, including unfounded claims that Vietnamese people “did not show signs of ageing”.
- The lack of care taken in these interactions, as well as leading to poor decisions, also means that indicators of trafficking and other safeguarding concerns are being missed.
“No learning to take”
- In our report, GMIAU’s primary recommendation was that the Home Office acknowledge what is demonstrably true: that their age assessment practice is leading to children being wrongly sent to adult accommodation. We highlighted the data that has been collected by charities and local authorities, showing that of potential children in adult accommodation referred to local authorities, well over 50% are determined to be children.
- But the ICIBI’s findings make clear that the Home Office is actively dismissive of this evidence:
- “KIU senior managers did not accept that there was any learning to take from assessments by local authorities that found individuals to be children when the initial age decision was that they were an adult.”
Local authorities and voluntary sector organisations are picking up the pieces when children are harmed by the Home Office’s assessments, while being ignored as stakeholders.
Use of AI
The day of the publication of the ICIBI’s deeply concerning report into their practice, the Home Office grabbed headlines with an announcement that they were looking into the use of AI “Facial Age Estimation” technology to conduct age assessments.
We welcome the news that the government will abandon their pursuit of other “technological” forms of age assessment including MRI scans and X-rays, but we are deeply concerned about the use of AI. AI reflects the data it’s trained on, and the risk of bias is high. The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) said: “Social workers who specialise in Merton-compliant age assessment are highly skilled and trained in assessing age and protecting people’s rights and dignity in the process. This should never be compromised for a way of achieving quicker results.”
There is no scientific or biological way to determine age for certain. This is why years of experience and case law have resulted in guidelines for best practice, holistic age assessments, referred to as “Merton compliant”. They are complex and never 100% precise, but that complexity cannot be avoided.
What needs to happen
The Home Office have accepted the ICIBI’s eight recommendations for changes to their age assessment process. We hope these will bring some positive changes to their practice. In particular, recommendations to inform local authorities when young people determined to be over 18 by the Home Office are moving into their area, and to improve data publishing on age assessments generally, were also recommendations in our report, and we are glad to see them accepted. But the attempt to use AI to shortcut holistic age assessments is a move in the wrong direction, and should be rethought.
The culture of disbelief, hostility towards vulnerable young people, flawed and racist decision-making, and dismissal of stakeholders’ concerns, highlighted in both GMIAU’s and ICIBI’s research, suggests that the accepted changes are not enough. A wholesale overhaul of Home Office age assessment practice is needed, starting with an acknowledgement of the harm being done.
The Home Office should not be assessing age at the border: if an age assessment is necessary it should be Merton compliant and conducted by social workers who are not employed by the Home Office. We want to emphasise that the pursuit of technological shortcuts, and the current hostile interrogations at the border, are a political choice, not a necessity.