Huge surge in refugee children as young as 14 treated as adults by UK

Child asylum seekers can end up having to share accommodation with adults, leaving them traumatised, campaigners say

A young boy among a group of migrants at the Border Force compound in Dover, Kent, after being rescued from a small boat in the English Channel. PA

The number of refugee children who say they have wrongly been assessed as adults in the UK has increased five-fold since 2019, putting them at risk of abuse, evidence presented to an inquiry shows.

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium (RMCC), a group of 100 organisations supporting young asylum seekers, is among the bodies that have submitted evidence to the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, which is looking at age assessments.

In its submission, which it has shared with The National, the RMCC says refugee children are often given a brief visual assessment and interview, often lasting only 10 minutes, when they arrive by small boats in Dover.

This results in hundreds of children, some as as young as 14, sharing accommodation with adults who they have never met, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and bullying, with no access to education and no one to look after them.

Children who find themselves in these circumstances can seek the help of support groups to bring legal challenges, which can take months and result in them having to appear in court. Last year, there "were five times the number of age disputes than in 2019", says the RMCC submission.

Kamena Dorling, director of policy at The Helen Bamber Foundation, which is part of the RMCC, said there needs to be an urgent overhaul in the way refugee children’s ages are assessed.

“Children seeking asylum in the UK have already endured war, conflict, human rights abuses, and exploitation,” she told The National.

“The age assessment process causes yet more harm to this already traumatised group. Yet, in recent years we have seen a huge jump in the number of children wrongly treated as adults by the Home Office.”

So far this year, 27,225 migrants have made the crossing of the English Channel to the UK, which is a 5 per cent increase on the same time last year, but 25 per cent less than 2022, when numbers reached their peak. Children have made up a growing proportion of the total numbers arriving.

In the year ending June 2024, there were 4,781 applications from unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, 16 per cent less than in the year ending June 2023.

The journey is becoming increasingly risky. Three migrants died on Wednesday while attempting the crossing, bringing the total to 55 this year.

Among children assessed are those who have travelled from such as Afghanistan, Sudan and Eritrea who are unable to show official identity documents, such as passports or birth certificates.

This is because they either never had them or the papers were destroyed, lost or stolen. Often children are forced to travel on false documentation.

But even when asylum seekers do have a birth certificate showing them to be children, this may not be the end of the process of proving they are under 18.

The RMCC evidence relates how a 16-year-old arrived on a small boat with a birth certificate but because it was written in Arabic it was ignored and instead a visual assessment found him to be an adult.

He understood some English and heard a member of the border staff saying he was 25, and he was put in a hotel for single adult males. However, when his belongings arrived, his birth certificate was missing.

The asylum seeker “was extremely distressed throughout” his time in adult accommodation, where he experienced bullying, had suicidal thoughts and self-harmed. His age was eventually accepted six months after he arrived in the UK.

Accounts from other refugee children in the RMCC submission tell of being laughed at or mocked when they provide their correct date of birth, and told they are lying.

In other instances, they are being told they cannot possibly be children because of an “inappropriate comment relating to their physical appearance”, such as they are too tall, too hairy or their hands are too big.

The UK Department of Education, guidance from social workers and international standards all say age assessments should not be rudimentary, to prevent children going through a traumatising experience.

The Home Office’s own guidance makes clear that “physical appearance is a notoriously unreliable basis for assessment of chronological age” and “demeanour can also be notoriously unreliable and by itself constitutes only somewhat fragile material”.

Currently the standard method of deciding a refugee's age is known as a “Merton assessment” after the case law that shaped the best practice. The criteria developed by Merton Council in south-west London has been adopted across the nation.

But the application of the standards has varied widely. In one instance, UK officials used a guide to shaving produced by razor manufacturer Gillette in a bid to prove an Afghan refugee was not a child.

In another, they claimed a refugee was 28 when he was in fact 17, based on what they claimed was his beard line and deep voice. Their observations left charity workers, teachers and a judge dumfounded when they saw him first-hand.

Often children who are placed in adult accommodation after being assessed as over 18 this way find themselves having to contact organisations themselves for help, the RMCC submission found.

It details how the Humans for Rights Network received 832 calls from children who were sharing a room with an unrelated adult.

Helen Bamber Foundation earlier this year found more than 1,300 children wrongly assessed to be adults by the Home Office were sent to adult accommodation or detention before being referred to local authority children’s services.

The RMCC is calling age assessments by the Home Office to be limited to those with relevant training.

Someone claiming to be a child should be treated as an adult only in exceptional circumstances such as if there is evidence that they are in their late 20s or older.

“NGOs and local authorities are having to step in to help hundreds of children in improper settings where there are no safeguards to protect them from harm,” said Ms Dorling.

“We urgently need to see an end to the flawed policy of border officials assessing age on sight and for age disputes to be a last resort."

David Bolt, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, is independent from the government and began his inquiry last month into age assessments. The remit of the report he has been tasked with includes the efficiency, effectiveness and consistency of the age assessments.

It is not know when the report is due to be submitted.

The Home Office said it is "working in full co-operation" with The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration with the inspection.

"Some individuals arrive in the UK without documentary evidence and where there is doubt on someone’s age, there is a need to assess it," said a spokesman.

“We have clear processes in place to verify and assess an individual’s age where there is doubt. This includes the National Age Assessment Board, which consists of a team of trained social workers whose task is to conduct full age assessments.”