Why SAEF® Doesn’t End After Three Days
When people ask me about SAEF®, they often assume it’s simply a three-day training course on age assessment. It isn’t.
SAEF® was designed as a decision-making methodology that continues to support practitioners long after the training has finished.
Age assessment is one of the most dynamic areas of social work practice. New judgments are handed down, research continues to evolve and new technologies emerge that have the potential to influence professional decision making. As practitioners, we need to be able to respond thoughtfully to these developments while remaining grounded in social work values, evidence and the law.
No training course can anticipate every future challenge.
That’s why every practitioner who completes SAEF® becomes part of our Community of Practice.
These sessions provide a space for practitioners across the country to reconnect, share experiences and discuss emerging issues that may affect age assessment practice. We might explore a significant court judgment, review new research, examine a practice tool or consider the implications of new technology. The aim isn’t simply to share information, but to reflect together on what it means for practice and how it should influence professional judgement.
Our next Community of Practice focuses on facial age estimation technology.
With increasing discussion about artificial intelligence and its potential role in age assessment, practitioners are rightly asking important questions. Rather than debating whether facial age estimation is inherently good or bad, we’ll be exploring a more practical question:
How should this type of evidence be critically evaluated and appropriately weighted within an age assessment?
Within the SAEF® methodology, no single piece of evidence determines the outcome of an assessment. Instead, practitioners are supported to consider the relevance, reliability and weight of each piece of information before reaching an overall conclusion on the balance of probabilities.
That principle doesn’t change simply because the evidence comes from technology.
Professional judgement remains at the heart of the assessment.
The Community of Practice reflects one of the core principles behind SAEF®: that learning should continue as practice evolves. It provides practitioners with an opportunity to keep pace with new developments, test ideas with colleagues and continue strengthening their confidence in evidence-informed decision making.
Because social workers deserve more than a training course, they deserve a methodology that grows alongside the profession.
And ultimately, young people deserve decisions that are consistent, transparent and grounded in robust professional judgement.
Book onto our next SAEF® cohort here: ISWS | SAEF Training: September 2026 – ISWS
If you’d like to book for a larger group, please get in touch here: ISWS | Contact us – ISWS
