“Over recent years, thousands of children have been wrongly treated as adults by the Home Office. These children are in the UK on their own seeking asylum. Following decisions made by UK border officials that they are “significantly over 18” they have been sent alone to adult asylum accommodation, usually hotels.”
The latest report from the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU), one of KIND’s five expert partner organisations in the UK, details the experiences of children in the UK asylum system following incorrect age assessments at the border. It sums up those experiences with these words: “Each child we spoke to gave their own account of appalling treatment by the British state.”
Age assessment is a priority issue for KIND and our partners across Europe, and GMIAU’s report provides a crucial picture of the situation in the UK both from the perspective of legal experts and of the children themselves. “I feel like I am going to die,” one child told their team. “It is a very bad life in the hotel.”
The report, “This system destroys you”: Children trapped in adult asylum accommodation by the UK Home Office, details how at least 296 children were wrongly sent to adult asylum accommodation in the North West of England between January 2024 and February 2025 (the Home Office is the UK government department responsible for borders, immigration and asylum). Based on GMIAU’s legal expertise and the experiences of children their team works with, it reveals “what life is like for children alone in these hotels, the interrogations at the border that cause them to be sent there, and the urgent support they need to escape harm.”
From our work across the world, KIND has seen how initial age assessment, an incredibly inexact process with a wide margin for error and no single reliable, conclusive methodology, is crucial in not only shaping how an asylum claim will be processed and its potential outcome, but importantly the protection of children. Incorrectly identifying a child as an adult impacts their protection, access to critical safeguards, care and housing, and their development and life chances. Questioning the age of a child challenges their very identity and trust in the professionals and systems designed to protect them. It also impacts how an asylum officer analyses their very claim for protection.
In investigating the UK system, GMIAU’s experts looked at interrogations at the border and talked to children about officials’ reasons for disputing their claimed age. They found that questions were often based on unreliable factors and inconsistent practice in relation to children having or not having documents proving their age. The experts also heard reports of intimidating and aggressive behaviour by border officials. The finding that many of these interactions took place before the children were given time to rest after an exhausting and dangerous journey is highly concerning, and echoes the experiences of children KIND and our partners’ work with across the globe. All too often, this leads to children being turned away at borders rather than being brought into the systems designed to protect them.
The consequences for children who are wrongly assessed as adults can be catastrophic, and GMIAU focuses in this report on asylum accommodation. Children interviewed told GMIAU’s team: “They did not feel safe living amongst unknown adults. They experienced mental health crisis, including suicidal thoughts, loneliness and isolation. They were worried about their nutrition due to the poor standards of food in hotels. The staff at the hotels were sometimes unkind and unhelpful.”
“You can’t stop feeling sad,” one child told GMIAU. “You have to feel sad and angry when someone says you are a liar. It is in your heart.”
“This report is a call to action,” said GMIAU, “on a national level, but also in a local context, to ensure that these commitments can become a reality for every child who finds themselves in our region.”
Read the full report from GMIAU here.