Resetting Age Assessment Practice: What the Latest Case Law Tells Us and How SAEF Offers a Better Way Forward

Before we start: This blog is not intended as a criticism of the National Age Assessment Board. We are using this case simply because it is the most recent published judgment available at the time of writing. It offers a useful illustration of the challenges currently emerging in age assessment practice and the systemic issues practitioners are facing. The aim here is to reflect on what we can learn, and how frameworks like SAEF can help improve practice.

Age assessment practice is at a crossroads. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a marked shift towards increasingly interrogatory, interview‑style assessments that sit uneasily alongside social work values, trauma‑informed practice and the principles set out in case law.

A recent judgment from the Upper Tribunal offers a stark illustration of what is going wrong, and why a new approach is urgently needed.

A landmark judgment: when an age assessment goes wrong

In December 2025, the Upper Tribunal quashed a National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) decision in ALK v Secretary of State for the Home Department and Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council. The assessment had concluded that the young person was an adult. The Tribunal disagreed, finding him to be a 17‑year‑old child and criticised the assessment as “flawed in various fundamental respects”.

Several key failings were highlighted:

• Misinterpretation of country evidence: Assessors relied on a single 2004 report to conclude the applicant’s village could not have existed after that date, overlooking expert evidence and wider conflict patterns showing villages were often rebuilt and repeatedly attacked, making the applicant’s account entirely plausible.
• Misuse of dental evidence: Assessors placed undue weight on the eruption of wisdom teeth, despite case law confirming that third‑molar eruption is only a broad marker of late‑teen development and cannot reliably indicate chronological age.
• Over‑reliance on suspicion: Assessors “went too far” in treating the young person’s ID documents as “forged” without evidence.
• Misunderstanding and misinterpretation of documents: The Tribunal identified “obvious errors” in how documents were analysed.
• Unsubstantiated foreign‑authority checks: Assessors relied on alleged enquiries with the Spanish authorities despite having no evidence that these checks were made, made properly, or supported their suspicions about inconsistent personal details.
• Inappropriate and disrespectful conduct during the assessment: Assessors failed to make proper allowances for the young person’s trauma and vulnerability, and aspects of the questioning — including rude, dismissive comments about Brexit and the “smell” of his documents — showed the interviews were not conducted in a professional or trauma‑informed manner.
• Failure to account for vulnerability: The young person was accepted by all parties to “appear young” and to be vulnerable, with diagnoses of PTSD and depression, yet the assessment process did not reflect this.

The result was a 90‑page assessment that the Tribunal ultimately could not place weight on.

This judgment is not an outlier. It reflects a broader pattern: assessments drifting towards adversarial fact‑checking exercises, with insufficient attention to trauma, context or the holistic principles that underpin lawful and ethical practice.

How SAEF approaches this differently

The Social Work Age Estimation Framework (SAEF) was developed precisely to address these systemic issues. It offers a structured, research‑grounded, case‑law‑aligned approach that brings age assessment back into the domain of social work where it belongs.

Here’s how SAEF would have approached the ALK assessment differently.

1. Trauma‑informed, not interrogatory

Where the NAAB assessment resembled an asylum interview, SAEF explicitly rejects interrogatory methods. It centres social work practice, pacing and emotional safety, essential when working with young people and young adults who are likely to experience PTSD, depression or histories of violence and displacement.

2. Evidence‑based, not suspicion‑driven

SAEF requires practitioners to consider all available evidence of age, but also to understand the limits of that evidence. It avoids speculative leaps, such as assuming documents are forged without proof, and instead supports practitioners to analyse evidence proportionately and contextually.

3. Contextual interpretation of inconsistencies

SAEF trains practitioners to understand why inconsistencies arise: trauma, translation, cultural norms around age, coercive environments and the unreliability of initial encounters with authorities.

In ALK, the Tribunal criticised the assessors for treating inconsistent dates of birth as evidence of dishonesty despite clear contextual explanations. SAEF embeds this contextual reasoning into its core.

4. Holistic, not piecemeal

The Tribunal emphasised the need for a holistic assessment. SAEF operationalises this by guiding practitioners through a structured, multi‑layered analysis that integrates:

• developmental age indicators
• lived experience
• cultural context
• trauma impacts
• documentary evidence
• professional observation

This avoids the “checklist” or “gotcha” style reasoning that undermined the NAAB assessment.

5. Social‑work‑led decision‑making

SAEF restores confidence to practitioners by grounding decisions in social work skills: relationship‑building, narrative understanding, reflective analysis and ethical judgment.
It moves away from the procedural defensiveness that often leads to excessively long, adversarial assessments.

What this means for practice

The ALK judgment is a reminder that age assessments must be lawful, fair and child‑centred. But it is also a reminder that practitioners need tools, training and frameworks that support them to meet that standard.

SAEF offers:

• clarity in a landscape that has become increasingly complex
• confidence for practitioners who feel uneasy or under‑prepared
• consistency across local authorities
• compassion for young people and young adults navigating trauma and uncertainty
• compliance with case law and safeguarding duties

Most importantly, it offers a way to prevent the kinds of fundamental errors that led to the assessment in ALK being quashed.

A better future for age assessment

We developed SAEF because we believe that age assessment can, and must, be done differently. The ALK judgment shows what happens when practice drifts away from social work values. SAEF shows what happens when we bring those values back to the centre.

If you’d like to learn more about SAEF, explore the pilot findings, or discuss how it could support your organisation, we’d be delighted to talk.

 

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