A coalition of refugee support groups has called for a Home Office organisation to be axed, claiming it is putting hundreds of children at risk.

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, which consists of more than 100 organisations including the Refugee Council, Barnardo’s and the NSPCC, has published a report analysing the performance of the Home Office’s national age assessment board (NAAB), which was set up in March 2023 to determine the ages of young asylum seekers newly arrived in the UK, often on small boats.

The board employs more than 50 social workers to conduct the assessments, but some children have said they are “out to get them”.

The report finds that in some cases the process has led to children’s deteriorating mental health, including self-harm and suicidal ideation, and that going through a Home Office age assessment is “far more severe and traumatic” than a comparable experience with a local authority social worker.

If children are wrongly assessed as adults they will be placed in adult accommodation, often alongside unrelated people, which can put them at risk. Some have ended up in adult prisons after being charged with offences relating to their journey to the UK, such as steering a dinghy.

The report cites the case of one child who was 15 on arrival but was assessed by the Home Office to be seven years older than his true age and charged with offences relating to his arrival. He was confirmed to be the age he said he was last year and criminal charges against him were dropped.

The previous government set up the body because of concerns about adults “gaming the system” by pretending to be children. Freedom of information data reveals, however, that many whom the Home Office initially declare to be adults are later confirmed to be children after detailed assessments by local authority social workers.

Some judges have also found the NAAB assessment process to be flawed, criticising it as adversarial, inconsistent with current guidance and lacking objectivity, the report says.

It raises concerns that “there is a risk that the political discourse may influence professional judgment, undermining the impartiality required by the code of conduct”.

The independent chief inspector for borders and immigration identified concerns about NAAB in a report last summer, while a Home Office commissioned report by the National Centre for Social Research was largely positive, although it includes the caveat that its sample was small and evidence was primarily from the Home Office and local authorities.

The consortium’s report calls for NAAB to be disbanded and the money provided instead to local authorities to boost their social workers’ capacity to carry out age assessments. It says there should be independent oversight of the board if it is allowed to continue, and that local authority decisions to accept some young people as children without a full age assessment should be respected.

The Refugee Council’s senior policy analyst, Kama Petruczenko, said: “NAAB was set up to bring consistency to age checks, but the evidence shows it is putting children at risk. Courts have found its assessments flawed, delays are common and local social workers’ judgements are often overridden.

“Because NAAB sits inside the Home Office, immigration control and safeguarding are blurred. Children need independent, child-centred, trauma-informed assessments led by local authorities, not adversarial processes that compound existing problems.”

The founder and director of the Humans For Rights Network, Maddie Harris, said children it supported had described NAAB assessments as “interrogatory, hostile and terrifying”.

“It is our view that the NAAB often starts from the position that a person is an adult, searching for evidence to fit this narrative,” she said.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Robust age assessments are vital for safeguarding and border integrity, and we continue to improve the service in line with independent recommendations. We will review this report carefully.

“The national age assessment board provides specialist, trauma‑informed expertise to support local authorities, and all assessments are carried out by qualified social workers following nationally recognised guidance.”