The High Court has rejected an application for Interim Relief to provide age appropriate accommodation to someone who Hackney had previously assessed as being over 18. Although much of the judgment concerns itself about the legal framework to provide interim relief there are some really useful nuggets of information that provide an insight into what Judges expect to see in a lawful and robust age assessment which I wanted to share.
The claimant was referred to Hackney Borough Council in August 2020 and was initially accommodated prior to the completion of an age assessment. Hackney found him to be over the age of 18 and discharged him to the care of the Home Office. There is a lot of preamble in the judgment which can be found here but I’ve summarised the main headlines below.
The two concerns raised by the claimant were:
On the first point they argued that that Hackney did not take properly into account the views of an English tutor and the accommodation Manager. Although we do not have access to the assessment, from reading the judgment it appears as though this was either omitted from the report, or not given appropriate weighting (according to the claimants solicitors). This point was accepted by Hackney but the really interesting part is the judges summary:
“ Whilst this is something that ought properly be taken into account, in my judgment it does not carry the same weight as the opinion of social workers trained in age assessment techniques, adopting a Merton compliant approach as the defendants assert here”
For those on my training, you will have heard me say “you are the experts” and this judgment goes some way to showing you, that if you evidence things well in your report, a judge will recognise that expertise and give it weighting. So use that expertise! We are all trained in gathering information, analysing it and drawing conclusions, that is where our expertise lies. So recognise this in your assessment and use it to help form decisions.
The claimants solicitor argued that the assessment was not wholly Merton compliant; for example, the claimant was not aware he was providing information for an age assessment when he was talking to social workers, however the judgment goes on to detail how the authors of the report explained that they;
All of these actions point towards the assessment being completed lawfully, and the social workers avoided having to give evidence because they wrote this down in their report. This is why I labour the point in my training
“anticipate the challenge and deal with it in advance ” i.e. write down all the steps you took to make your assessment lawful.
To avoid being accused of completing an unlawful assessment, we need to evidence in our report how we were case law compliant, thus fending off any potential challenges before they become an issue.
The next section talks about how the social workers formed their opinion and why the judge considered this appropriate.
On the issue of physical appearance and demeanour;
“It was made clear that the social workers understood these factors alone could not be used to verify age, because young people’s development can vary considerably”
Again, the social workers have formed an opinion on the claimants appearance and demeanour but have recognised the limitations in drawing this conclusion and have acknowledged this in their report. In doing this, the social workers have shown the court that they understand the complexities of conducting age assessments which provides confidence to the judge that these social workers know what they are doing – therefore adding weight to their argument and subsequent conclusion.
In a similar thread, the social workers seem to assert that there were some discrepancies in the claimants ability to recall information and have drawn conclusions around this. The report considers how this could be due to memory recall or trauma but have evidenced why they don’t think this is the case. The social workers have therefore provided a balanced argument, recognising the potential challenges and dealing with them in advance.
On the second point – that the social workers conclusion was “entirely unexplained and unreasoned” the judge held that this was not the case. The social workers in the report concluded that the claimant was between the ages of 21 and 25 and gave him a date of birth that made him 21.
The impressive bit here is the social workers did not assign a date of birth stating “this is his date of birth” without reasoned explanation (which I see all the time!) but rather said, “we think he is within this range, and therefore we are going to give him the youngest date of birth within this age range”. They had backed up their reasoning in their report and the judge commented that “ultimately, age assessment is not a science capable or precise explanation; the whole content of the report went to explain the conclusion of its authors”
Although this judgment centred around the request for providing interim relief and the thresholds for that, it also gave us some really useful indicators of the sorts of things Judges want to see in our assessments.
So, as always, use the case law to your advantage. Some case law shows us how not to undertake assessments, and others give us examples of good practice. This is an example of one of the latter.
* Please remember that I am not a lawyer and therefore cannot provide any legal advice, these posts are looking at case law through the lens of social work practice. Please seek guidance from your own legal department should you require advice on legal matters. For practice questions, please get in touch here
