A report published last week by the Immigration Law Practioners' Association, When Is a Child Not a Child? has alleged that some social work managers are pressurising or instructing social workers to assess unaccompanied asylum seeking children as older than they are in order to save money.
The highly comprehensive report highlights the potential conflict of interest in the currrent system where social workers who carry out the assessment work for the local authority who will then have to support the child.
Of course it is unfair for social work managers to exert pressure on social workers in this way but they are not the real villians of the piece. It is only due to the government's constant failure to properly fund services for this group that they feel compelled to try to safeguard their employers' resources.
As anyone working with unaccompanied minors knows the rates given out to councils to pay for unaccompanied minors are too low with the leaving care costs associated with the group being particularly burdensome.
While the government did recognise the issue of leaving care costs in its recent proposals on changes to services for unaccompanied minors, http://www.homeoffice.gov.ukwhich closes this week, its solution seems to be a tightening of the childrens' rights to stay in the UK rather than the major cash injection the system requires.