Home Office age assessments for asylum seekers under inspection

What is the NAAB?

• The NAAB was set up under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (NBA) and consists primarily of social workers employed to carry out age assessments of age-disputed unaccompanied asylum seekers.
• These assessments take place where: there is reasonable doubt about their claims to be children; they claim to be adults but are suspected to be children; they are accepted as children but there are doubts about their age.
• The NAAB will generally undertake assessments of age-disputed unaccompanied asylum seekers on referral from a local authority or health and social care trust in Northern Ireland.
• However, the board may also carry out assessments in other cases specified in the legislation, including where the Home Office doubts a local authority’s conclusion as to the person’s age, or to inform Home Office decision making on the person’s immigration status.
• As with local authority social workers, NAAB assessors must carry out ‘Merton-compliant’ assessments, ie they should comply with the judgment in B v London Borough of Merton [2003]. This includes that the assessment is carried out by two social workers, where practicable, and that practitioners are trained and experienced in this area of practice.
• As of April 2024, it employed 42 social workers.

More information is available from the Home Office’s guidance on the NAAB.

Bolt said his inspection would cover guidance, training, and development, workforce planning, record keeping and data collection, quality assurance, risk management and safeguarding, and stakeholder engagement.

Call for evidence

In a call for evidence, the chief inspector said: “I am inviting anyone with knowledge or first-hand experience of an age assessment conducted by the Home Office to submit evidence to inform this inspection. I would like to hear about both what is working well and what could be improved.

“I would therefore welcome any case studies from those who have worked with individuals who have undergone a Home Office age assessment.”

However, he stressed he cannot investigate individual cases, though can assess them as examples of more systemic issues.

BASW seeks dismantling of assessment board

It is not clear what prompted the inspection, but the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) – a long-time opponent of the NAAB – said it hoped that it would lead to the end of the body.

BASW chief executive Ruth Allen said: “Former home secretaries have been prejudicial about age-disputed young people travelling to the UK through unsafe routes, and our fear was that these highly-charged political views would feed down into the daily work of social workers who feel pressured by their organisation to assess young people to deliver a particular outcome.

“There was never a need for the Home Office to be involved with age assessments, yet local authorities who are experiencing financial difficulties are referring to the National Age Assessment Board because they do not have the resources to do it themselves. The Home Office should instead have provided local authorities with the resources to be able to carry out the assessments fairly and timely.

BASW chief executive Ruth Allen (credit: BASW)

She added: “The launch of an investigation is welcome, and we hope that this is the start of the dismantling of the National Age Assessment Board and the move back towards local authorities being responsible for the conduct of age assessments.”

The call for evidence for the inspection will be open until 25 September 2024. To contribute, email the ICIBI.