WHEN Jenny first met Home Office officials it had been a long time since she had enough to eat or drink, or slept. Brought from Vietnam to Europe by traffickers on a plane, she had been forced to trek for days before being put on a small boat across the channel. The journey was frightening and made her sick.
On arrival in England, still reeling from what was happening, she told officials she was 16 years old. But having been first trafficked at just 12, she had no documentation to prove it. Officials probed further – asking her date of birth, her nationality, and the details of her journey.
There were 25 questions, according to documentation seen by The Ferret, most with a one-word answer. They looked at the bags under her eyes, her thinning hair and decided that she was lying. Then the Home Office gave her a new date of birth, making her 22 years old and processed her as an adult asylum seeker.
It’s a decision that Jenny – as we are calling her to protect her identity – is still fighting. But she is far from alone and the consequences are far-reaching.
A growing number of trafficked and vulnerable asylum-seeking children are being “unlawfully” denied appropriate support – and even left street homeless – by Scottish local authorities after being wrongly assessed as adults by the Home Office, according to a new report.
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Legal firm Just Right Scotland, which examined the experiences of migrant young people in Scotland without their parents, also found dozens were accommodated in adult asylum hotels, putting them at risk of being exploited or re-trafficked.
Its report – and accompanying legal judgment – due to be published tomorrow, found that UK-wide age disputes raised by the Home Office have increased by 450% from 853 in 2020 to 4698 in 2023.
Research shows that assessments – based on “appearance and demeanour” and often taking less than 15 minutes – are “flawed”, with one report from January 2024 finding over 1300 young people had been wrongly assessed as adults in an 18-month period.
Freedom of information requests by Just Right found that out of 253 migrant children and young people in contact with Scottish local authorities, 104 (41%) were refused support. Decisions were often influenced by the Home Office assessment, they argued.
When children are deemed to be adults, they will often be placed in an asylum hotel, sharing a room with an adult stranger. They will have no-one to look after them and will not be in education.
The report details stories of children like Jenny, including those claiming to be as young as 15 years old, housed in asylum hotels. Some were survivors of sexual exploitation.
Several others, including one girl claiming to be 16 who ran away from the hotel she was staying in after being sexually assaulted there, ended up homeless and sleeping on the streets but were refused local authority help.
Where the age of a young person is disputed, local authorities should legally carry out a full age assessment, but researchers documented routine “gate-keeping” by local authorities in ways they claim were not legally compliant.
The report raised concerns that “overburdened” and “under-resourced” local authorities were more likely to find young migrants to be over 18, where they were under increased pressure due to a higher number of referrals.
Young people are often being left without support – and in potentially “dangerous” adult accommodation – for months or even years while fighting age assessment decisions, researchers found.
This is true for Jenny, who was taken from her Home Office accommodation in England by the Vietnamese traffickers and forced to work in a cannabis cultivation farm in Scotland.
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When she escaped, police – using her Home Office records – also treated her as an adult.
Despite support from Just Right Scotland and several charities, she has been unable to access support from the local authority.
Francesca Sella, a solicitor for Just Right Scotland and author of the report said: “Most, if not all, young people that we work with have experienced abuse trauma, possibly during conflict in their home country but also during the journey to the UK when there can be sexual or criminal exploitation as well.”
This has left people “vulnerable” when they arrived at the border, she explained, which can affect their “physical presentation, their behaviour, and their ability to disclose some things about their past to authorities”. “It’s probably the worst possible time to be carrying out age assessments,” she added.
Scottish local authorities were often slow or unwilling to complete further age assessment processes, she claimed, with some even asking young people to go to the police first and get their fingerprints taken before meeting with social workers. “This is in breach of legislation,” Sella said.
Glasgow City Council, one of the authorities named in the report as doing so, told The Ferret this was a case of “crossed wires” and insisted it followed Just Right Scotland’s own guidance on age assessment.
It said the process “routinely takes up to six weeks”, with initial assessments by two social workers lasting 30 minutes. In cases where they considered the young person a child, they would be taken into care while a fuller assessment process was completed, they claimed.
HOWEVER Sella said asylum-seeking young people across Scotland too often remained in adult accommodation during this process, which she said, had “serious impacts” on their physical and mental health, as well as raising child protection and re-trafficking concerns.
She called for authorities across the UK and Scotland to urgently address the issue.
The Just Right findings were backed up by other organisations.
Phil Arnold, head of refugee support at the British Red Cross, told a Scottish Parliamentary committee in February that the charity had supported 32 young people who had been accommodated in Scotland by the Home Office following so-called “glance” age assessments – where age is assessed on appearance only.
The charity, which worked with children forced to sleep rough, told Just Right that only 9% of the young people judged to be children it supported in 2023 were taken into care.
Arnold claimed it took three months on average for local authorities to agree to age assess young people supported by the charity. More than 80% of those were later found to be children.
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“We support the recommendations made in the Just Right Scotland report,” he told The Ferret. “Where there is a reasonable doubt over someone’s age, young people should be treated as children and not adults.”
Children and Young People’s Commissioner, Nicola Killean, said the report described “the dangerous reality many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children face”.
“The root of this issue lies with the Home Office, but this report sheds light on unlawful and unacceptable practice by Scottish local authorities,” she added. “Local authorities have their own legal duties to children that must be complied with. Any failure to do so is a violation of children’s rights.”
A Home Office spokesperson said that when someone arrived in the UK “without documentary evidence” of their identity and where there was doubt about someone’s age, “there is a need to assess it”.
“We have robust processes in place to verify and assess an individual’s age where there is doubt,” they added.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said it planned to “revise and update its age assessment guidance,” and had “previously expressed concerns regarding the UK Government’s policies and approach to age assessment”.
More than a year after arriving in the UK, Jenny’s fight for support is far from over. “I hope that the Home Office and social workers never treat others the way that they have treated me,” she said. “All I can do is to keep fighting to get my identity back.”
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