Purpose of this tool
Discussions about risk in age-disputed cases often focus on the possibility that an adult may be wrongly accommodated or supported as a child. This is a legitimate safeguarding consideration and should not be dismissed but it is only one possible error.
The opposite error, a child being wrongly treated as an adult, can also expose a young person to significant harm and may remove or reduce many of the safeguards that would ordinarily be available to them as a child.
A balanced approach to safeguarding therefore requires practitioners and managers to consider risk in both directions:
Risk A: What could happen if an adult is wrongly treated as a child?
Risk B: What could happen if a child is wrongly treated as an adult?
This tool is intended to support professional analysis rather than provide a scoring system. It does not assume that either outcome is inherently more likely or more serious. The nature and level of risk will depend upon the individual, their circumstances, the environment in which they are placed and the safeguards available.
Discussions about age and risk can understandably generate strong emotional responses, particularly where concerns are raised about the possibility of adults being accommodated alongside children. As already highlighted, these concerns should be taken seriously, however emotive discussion can sometimes narrow the focus of safeguarding analysis to one particular outcome: the risk of an adult being wrongly treated as a child. When the focus is on safeguarding, concern for the safety of children requires us to consider the other possibility with equal seriousness that the person about whom we are making the decision may themselves be a child.
This tool is therefore intended to encourage a broader and more nuanced professional conversation. Rather than asking only “what if this person is an adult?”, it invites practitioners to consider “what if this person is a child?”, and to examine the potential harms, available safeguards and consequences of getting the decision wrong in either direction.
It is important to highlight that age itself should not be treated as a proxy for harmful behaviour. Aggression, exploitation, sexualised behaviour, substance misuse, vulnerability and negative influence are not exclusive to either adults or children. Risk should therefore be based upon evidence about the individual and their circumstances rather than assumptions associated with chronological age.
In social work practice we see everyday examples of this in real time. Many local authorities work with care-experienced adults who use their experiences positively to mentor and support newly arrived young people. Their adulthood is not a source of risk, but rather their experience, maturity and relationships can be a source of considerable support to a young person who is newly arrived and feeling overwhelmed. Equally, practitioners work with children and young people under 18 who, for many different reasons, may display behaviour that presents significant risk to themselves or others. Their status as children does not make those risks any less real.
The relevant safeguarding question is therefore not simply “is this person an adult or a child?” but “what do we actually know about this individual, their behaviour, their vulnerabilities and the circumstances around them?” Age assessment determines which legal and service framework may apply, it does not, by itself, determine whether someone is safe or unsafe.
| Area of risk | Potential harm | Existing safeguards and mitigations | Factors affecting the level of risk |
| Safeguarding and physical safety | An adult accommodated alongside children could display aggressive, intimidating, sexualised, substance-related or otherwise inappropriate behaviour which causes harm or distress to children. However, these behaviours are not exclusive to adults and being aged over 18 does not, in itself, establish that somebody presents such a risk. | Children receiving care will usually have access to carers, support workers and social work professionals. Staff can observe behaviour, record concerns and respond through established safeguarding procedures. The degree of oversight will depend upon the placement. | Evidence of concerning behaviour; vulnerabilities of other children; placement type; staffing levels; quality of risk assessment and matching; ability of children to raise concerns; responsiveness of professionals. |
| Influence and exploitation | An older or more experienced individual may be able to influence younger children towards unsafe or harmful behaviour. Children may perceive an older individual as more knowledgeable or authoritative. However, harmful influence and exploitation can occur between people of any age. | Carers, support workers and social workers should be alert to changes in behaviour, relationships and peer dynamics. Concerns can be assessed and risk-management strategies introduced where necessary. | Nature of the relationship; difference in maturity or life experience; vulnerability of the child; evidence of coercion or control; level of supervision; peer-group dynamics. |
| Privacy and accommodation | A person wrongly treated as a child may gain access to private or communal spaces shared with children, potentially creating opportunities for inappropriate interactions or boundary violations. | Children’s placements generally have rules concerning bedrooms, bathrooms and communal areas. Staff should monitor compliance and respond to inappropriate behaviour. Foster care and children’s homes generally provide greater oversight than more independent forms of accommodation. | Placement design; availability of private spaces; staffing; supervision; observed behaviour; whether concerns have previously arisen. |
| Legal and regulatory considerations | Families, courts and professionals may reasonably expect children’s placements to safeguard children from inappropriate placement arrangements. A local authority may also face scrutiny if it knowingly fails to respond to credible concerns about age or risk. | Placement decisions are shared safeguarding responsibilities. Children’s homes and other regulated settings use assessment and matching processes. Where there is credible uncertainty about age, further enquiries or a lawful age-assessment process can be considered. | Quality of information giving rise to the age concern; seriousness of any identified safeguarding risk; placement type; ability to mitigate risk without immediately determining age. |
| Health settings | A person believed to be a child may access paediatric services and environments alongside other children. If they display harmful or inappropriate behaviour, this could affect vulnerable patients. | Healthcare services have safeguarding responsibilities regardless of the age of the person presenting the risk. Staff should identify, assess and escalate concerning behaviour. | Nature of healthcare setting; individual behaviour; vulnerability of other patients; supervision and safeguarding arrangements. |
| Education | An adult wrongly treated as a child could access education alongside children. Where that individual presents harmful behaviour, this could create safeguarding concerns for pupils or students. | Schools and colleges are subject to safeguarding duties and should identify and respond to concerning behaviour irrespective of the person’s age. | Nature of education provision; age range of students; individual behaviour; safeguarding oversight; evidence of concerning interactions. |
| Financial and resource implications | Children’s services may provide accommodation, support and other resources to an adult who would not otherwise be entitled to receive them through children’s social care. Age-assessment processes themselves also require significant professional resources. | Where there is credible evidence that a person may not be a child, local authorities can undertake proportionate enquiries and, where necessary, a lawful age assessment. | Strength of evidence concerning age; cost and proportionality of assessment; duration and level of services being provided; availability of less intrusive means of resolving concerns. |
| Discrimination and wider practice | Previous experiences of adults wrongly treated as children may contribute to a culture of suspicion in which other young people’s accounts of their age are more readily doubted. This may result in children being subjected to unnecessary scrutiny or assessment. | Decisions should be based on the evidence concerning the individual young person. Practitioners should remain alert to stereotyping, confirmation bias and assumptions arising from previous cases. | Organisational culture; practitioner experience; quality of supervision; nature of evidence relied upon; use of physical appearance or demeanour as indicators of age. |
| Area of risk | Potential harm | Existing safeguards and mitigations | Factors affecting the level of risk |
| Safeguarding and physical safety | A child placed in adult accommodation may be exposed to intimidating, sexualised, aggressive, substance-related or otherwise inappropriate adult behaviour. An unaccompanied child may be particularly vulnerable because they do not have a parent or carer available to recognise concerns, advocate for them or help them seek protection. | Safeguards vary considerably. Some contingency accommodation may have staff present, whereas other forms of adult accommodation, including houses in multiple occupation, may offer little direct safeguarding oversight. A child may therefore have to recognise a risk and seek help independently. | Type of accommodation; staffing and supervision; child’s developmental needs; trauma and vulnerability; language and communication; knowledge of UK systems; access to a telephone or internet; ability and confidence to seek help. |
| Influence and exploitation | A child living alongside adults may be vulnerable to coercion, exploitation or negative influence. The absence of a parent, carer or trusted professional may increase that vulnerability. | Protection may depend upon the availability of accommodation staff, statutory services, voluntary organisations or charities. In some adult settings there may be no professional routinely monitoring the child’s welfare or relationships. | Previous exploitation or trafficking; social isolation; dependence on adults; financial vulnerability; language; immigration status; access to trusted professionals; nature of accommodation. |
| Privacy and accommodation | A child may share living, bathroom or communal facilities with unrelated adults without the privacy, placement matching or safeguarding arrangements normally expected within children’s services. They may be frightened or uncomfortable but unable to identify an effective route for raising concerns. | Adult accommodation may have general rules and management arrangements, but these are not necessarily designed around the safeguarding needs of children. | Accommodation type; room-sharing arrangements; locks and private facilities; staffing; behaviour of other residents; child’s ability to report concerns. |
| Legal and procedural rights | A child wrongly treated as an adult may enter legal, immigration or criminal justice processes under adult procedures. They may have less understanding of their rights and less ability to navigate complex systems without advocacy or support. | Some support may be available through legal representatives, charities or other professionals, but this will not necessarily replicate the safeguards automatically available to a recognised child. | Actual age and developmental level; understanding of proceedings; access to legal advice; language and interpreting; availability of trusted adults or advocates; complexity of proceedings. |
| Health and consent | A child treated as an adult may be approached by healthcare professionals on the assumption that adult consent and decision-making arrangements apply. Their developmental needs may also be overlooked when planning treatment or assessing vulnerability. | Healthcare professionals retain duties to consider capacity, safeguarding and individual need rather than relying solely upon recorded age. However, a child whose age has been incorrectly recorded may not automatically benefit from the child-specific safeguards ordinarily available to them. | Actual age; maturity and understanding; nature of treatment; communication needs; trauma; availability of a parent, carer or advocate; accuracy of recorded information about age. |
| Education and development | A child treated as an adult may lose access to education or receive significantly reduced educational opportunities. Newly arrived young people may instead have to rely on voluntary or charitable provision for language learning and other education. This can affect longer-term development, integration and future opportunities. | Charities, colleges and community organisations may provide some opportunities, but these do not necessarily replicate the education and support available to a child recognised by statutory services. | Actual age; previous education; English language ability; local provision; immigration circumstances; time out of education; additional learning needs. |
| Emotional wellbeing and relationships | Being treated as an adult can result in the loss of child-specific support, relationships and stability. A child may experience abrupt changes in accommodation, education, professional relationships and community at a time when they are already managing separation, migration and uncertainty. | Support may continue through voluntary organisations or individual professionals, but entitlement to coordinated child-focused support may be significantly reduced once the person is treated as an adult. | Trauma history; attachment to carers and professionals; existing mental health needs; social network; family separation; immigration uncertainty; manner and speed of transition between services. |
| Discrimination and community safety | A child placed in adult asylum accommodation may experience hostility associated with immigration status, including protests or anti-immigration sentiment directed towards adult accommodation. This may be distressing or frightening for a young person already affected by displacement and uncertainty. | Police, accommodation providers and other agencies may respond to demonstrations or threats, but these measures do not remove the child’s exposure to a potentially hostile environment. | Location; local community tensions; frequency and nature of protests; child’s trauma history; visibility of accommodation; available support. |
Looking at the risks together
The purpose of considering these two outcomes alongside one another is not to establish that one risk is always greater than the other, nor to suggest that it is appropriate for adults to remain within children’s services where they are not entitled to receive those services.
Where there is genuine uncertainty about a person’s age, the age assessment process provides a mechanism through which that uncertainty can be explored and an evidence-based decision reached. If a person is assessed to be an adult, this can inform appropriate decisions about their accommodation and support.
However, it is important to distinguish between age concerns and safeguarding risks. A concern that a person may be an adult does not, in itself, mean that they present a risk to children. Equally, the absence of concerning behaviour does not provide evidence that a person is a child. Where there is evidence of a specific safeguarding concern, that concern should be identified, assessed and managed in its own right.
This distinction is particularly important during an age assessment. Practitioners should be careful not to allow hypothetical concerns about what an adult might do within children’s services to influence their interpretation of the evidence about the individual being assessed. Otherwise, there is a risk of circular reasoning: concern that the person may be an adult generates assumptions about potential risk, and those assumptions then reinforce the belief that the person is an adult which can impact the age assessment process.
Risk should not be inferred from disputed age, and disputed age should not be resolved by inferred risk.
Age assessment provides a means of resolving genuine uncertainty about age. Risk assessment provides a means of identifying and managing safeguarding concerns. The two may sometimes intersect, but they should not be conflated.
1. What is the potential harm?
Consider the nature and seriousness of the harm that could arise if the working assumption about age is wrong. This includes both the potential consequences for other children if an adult is wrongly treated as a child and the potential consequences for the individual if a child is wrongly treated as an adult.
2. How likely is that harm?
Distinguish between a possible harm and an evidenced risk. Risk analysis should be informed by what is known about the individual, their circumstances and the environment around them rather than assumptions about what someone of a particular perceived age might do.
3. What safeguards are available?
Consider not only the potential harm but also the systems available to prevent, identify and respond to it.
This is particularly important because the available safeguards may differ substantially between children’s and adult services. A potential adult temporarily supported within children’s services may remain within a system designed to observe welfare and identify and respond to safeguarding concerns. A child incorrectly excluded from children’s services may lose access to many of those protections precisely because they have been classified as an adult.
The objective is therefore not to minimise either risk, but to ensure that both are considered fairly, proportionately and on the evidence available. Where uncertainty remains, professional decision-making should not be driven by fear of a hypothetical outcome in one direction while overlooking the potential consequences of being wrong in the other.
Using this tool in practice
Where age is uncertain, practitioners and managers may find it helpful to ask:
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This tool is intended to support professional reflection and safeguarding analysis. It does not replace individual risk assessment, statutory guidance, legal advice or a lawful age-assessment process where one is necessary.
Where practitioners remain uncertain about how to progress from identified concerns to a fair and evidence-based age assessment, structured practice frameworks can provide additional support. ISWS offers the Social Work Age Estimation Framework (SAEF®), designed to support practitioners to gather, analyse and weigh evidence transparently while maintaining a trauma-informed, balanced and professionally curious approach. If your team would benefit from additional support with age assessment practice or would like to learn more about SAEF®, please contact ISWS to discuss training and implementation.
