Over the past 6 years we have been diligently carrying out age assessments, delivering age assessment training, completing research, developing practice and policy and more recently, writing a book on the subject (eek!) and for the last 12 months, we’ve been squirreling away working on something that we think is really exciting.
Through our research with Young Roots and PLP, and through our work in the courts we’ve seen a significant shift in the age assessment sector, with assessments moving towards a more interrogatory approach with assessments being undertaken more akin to a home office asylum interview.
We’ve heard from social workers who tell us that they feel uncomfortable doing age assessments because they feel it doesn’t align with social work values, and they do not feel confident in making decisions that can have such significant impact on people’s outcomes.
We have developed a new framework that will address the issues outlined above and more. The framework is an opportunity to reset age assessments and bring them in line with social work values and approaches.
Grounded by research, case law analysis and in consultation with young people with lived experience, we believe that SAEF offers social workers an alternative approach to age assessment that will leave them feeling more confident in their decision making.
It is trauma informed, social work led and robust. We move social workers from feeling anxious about what evidence to gather and provide a framework that supports them to consider all evidence of age (not just evidence of adulthood, we’ll talk more about this in another post!) ensuring that assessments are evidence based.
SAEF supports social workers to use their existing social work skills and work collaboratively with young people and young adults to ensure that assessments are trauma informed, collaborative and compassionate.
We have piloted SAEF within our agency with significant success and consistently high feedback from all stakeholders. We are now piloting it with a small group of local authorities and aim to launch it publicly in March 2026. We would love to have the opportunity to talk more about this so if you have any questions, would like more information or would like us to come and speak to your team about this, please reach out, we would love to talk to you about this.
