ISWS are very excited to launch their new research report examining decision making processes in age assessments, a collaboration with Young Roots and the Public Law Project.
There has been no research looking at social work practice in age assessment and as far as we are aware, this new report is the first of its kind.
The research focussed on how we as social workers are making decisions on age, by identifying the evidence used, the evidence missed, how credibility was considered, the types of resources cited and how conclusions were reached. To achieve this we created a data matrix of age indicators, secondary factor issues, timeline examinations, citations and the rationale behind decisions on age. We were then able to run several anonymised age assessments through this matrix to pull out the evidence relied upon by social workers.
Although there are some hard truths highlighting issues with our decision making in this research report, several key recommendations have been identified that are easy to implement, and if adopted, will increase the quality of our age assessments going forward.
We are thrilled to be part of this project, which has been 18 months in the making and we are excited about the potential opportunities to take our work in this area further.
If you’d like to read the full report please click here: Good decision making in age assessment: September 2024
If you are interested in improving your age assessments and taking them to the next level, we are now running age assessment master classes for professionals who have completed our one day training. We have incorporated this new research into both our master class curriculum and age assessment programmes, so please do get in touch if you’d like to know more.
