Decisions relating to lone child asylum seekers should be removed from Home Office officials because of fundamental problems with the way they treat this vulnerable group, a report has found.
The report calls for root-and-branch reform of the treatment of thousands of children who have fled persecution in their home countries and made hazardous journeys in search of safety, often crossing the Channel in a dinghy or concealing themselves in the back of a lorry.
Once they arrive in the UK many are wrongly classified as adults by the Home Office and sent to adult accommodation where they may be exploited or locked up in adult immigration detention centres.
Research by the Helen Bamber Foundation in the first half of 2024 in England and Scotland found 53% of young people initially told by the Home Office that they were adults were confirmed to be children by social worker assessments – at least 262 children.
Researchers at the London School of Economics and University of Bedfordshire, in partnership with the South London Refugee Association, compiled the findings along with young people who have experienced the asylum system.
The report says:
The government should take the asylum decision-making away from the Home Office and give it to independent professionals who know about children and children’s circumstances.
Children and young people need independent legal guardians from the time they arrive in the UK.
Decision-making processes should be faster so that children and young people do not have to spend years waiting to secure their status.
Children should be subject to age disputes only where there is a significant reason to doubt their age and as a measure of last resort where other approaches have been exhausted.
According to the report, one 17-year-old from Eritrea told researchers Home Office officials disputed their age and insisted they were five years older than the age they said they were. “I was crying, and I was so depressed, I don’t have any words to explain that, so I said, ‘OK, just leave me alone please.’ Then they took me back and then they took me for a third interview on the same day.”
The children’s commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, said: “Every child, regardless of where they are from or how they arrive in this country, has the right to safety, care and a chance to thrive. Children seeking asylum often arrive here alone, traumatised and at risk of exploitation, then face further distress through the uncertainty of confusing systems and long delays.
“Many of the experiences of children set out in this report mirror what children have told me as children’s commissioner and my team who work closely with them, providing advocacy and giving them a voice. Every unaccompanied child seeking asylum must be cared for appropriately from the moment they arrive and be treated first and foremost as children by all services that interact with them.”
Kama Petruczenko, a senior policy analyst at the Refugee Council, which provides support for unaccompanied child asylum seekers, said: “Young people who come to Britain in a desperate bid to be safe are invariably frightened and traumatised after all they have endured. They must be treated with dignity and humanity while the government acts as their corporate parent.
“Too often they face delay after delay at the hands of an asylum system beset by chronic backlog. A culture of disbelief around age means young people are often wrongly treated as an adult and deprived the support they need as a child.”
The report, examining the needs of this group of children and young people in London, where around a third of these children across England, are accommodated, was commissioned by London Councils and the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.