THE NATIONAL AGE ASSESSMENT BOARD AND TRAUMA-INFORMED PRACTICE: A QUESTION OF RESOURCE, NOT COMPETENCE

The National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) now plays a significant role in how Merton-compliant age assessments are conducted across England. As a social worker with over 25 years' experience in children's services, including nine years managing a specialist UASC team, I think the sector needs to ask some honest questions about whether this model best serves young people — and whether the resource could be deployed more effectively elsewhere.

The establishment of the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was, in many ways, an understandable response to a genuine problem. Local authorities across England were under enormous pressure. UASC numbers were rising, experienced social workers were scarce, and the legal and reputational risks of getting an age assessment wrong — in either direction — were significant. A centralised, specialist resource felt like a solution.

I want to be clear from the outset: this is not a criticism of the social workers working within the NAAB. From what I have seen and heard, many are experienced practitioners who take their responsibilities seriously. This is a question about structure, not competence. And it is a question I think the sector needs to ask openly — because others already are.

WHAT THE INSPECTION FOUND

In August 2025, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration published a report covering the NAAB's practice between July 2024 and February 2025. The findings are worth reading carefully by anyone in the sector.

The inspection raised concerns about the NAAB recruiting social workers without significant relevant practice experience. It found that assessment timescales regularly exceeded the NAAB's own targets. It identified inadequacies in the IT systems used by practitioners, including the absence of a proper case management system. And critically, it found that quality assurance was inadequate — risking, in the inspector's words, undermining the NAAB's own ambition to be a centre of excellence for practice.

Perhaps most significantly for this discussion, the inspection found evidence of what it described as a blurring of the boundaries — practitioners accessing Home Office asylum casework information and using it to question applicants' credibility. This is precisely the kind of structural risk that critics of the NAAB model have raised from the outset.

THE TRAUMA-INFORMED QUESTION

Age assessment, done well, is not primarily a procedural exercise. Yes, it must be Merton-compliant. Yes, it must be holistic, adequately reasoned, and free from over-reliance on appearance and demeanour. But beneath the procedural requirements lies something harder to codify: the ability to create the conditions in which a young person who may have experienced profound trauma feels safe enough to speak.

That capacity — an ability to read what is not being said as much as what is being said — is not simply a matter of training. It develops through sustained, direct work with young people. The social worker who has spent years sitting with unaccompanied children in placement reviews and statutory visits develops a feel for what trauma looks like in practice — the flat affect, the inconsistent chronology, the sudden withdrawal — that is difficult to replicate in an assessment context alone.

I am conscious that as an independent assessor I am not currently embedded in a UASC team myself. The challenge I am describing is not unique to the NAAB — it applies to any assessor who works at a remove from the day-to-day realities of young people's lives. But the inspection's finding that some NAAB practitioners lack significant relevant practice experience makes this concern more acute, not less.

THE STRUCTURAL QUESTION: MERTON-COMPLIANT ASSESSMENT WITHIN A HOME OFFICE FRAMEWORK

The British Association of Social Workers has been consistent and clear on this point since the NAAB was first proposed. BASW has called for the NAAB's abolition, citing the fundamental conflict of interest between an agency accountable to the Home Secretary undertaking assessments whose primary purpose should be the welfare of the child. As BASW's Chief Executive put it, the Home Office directly employing social workers to carry out age assessments of unaccompanied children is a risk to professional objectivity.

BASW's position is not a criticism of individual practitioners within the NAAB. It is a structural argument — the same argument I'm attempting to make. An agency that is part of the Home Office, and whose leadership is therefore accountable to the political priorities of the day, cannot provide the same structural guarantee of independence as an assessment conducted entirely outside that framework. The same structural question could be asked of any local authority where political leadership places pressure — consciously or otherwise — on professional decision-making in this area.

The inspection's finding of a blurring of boundaries — practitioners using Home Office asylum casework to question credibility — illustrates how even well-intentioned professionals can find their practice shaped by the organisational context in which they work. This is not a moral failing. It is what happens when structural conditions are not right.

WHERE SHOULD THE RESOURCE FOR AGE ASSESSMENT GO?

This is the question I think matters most. The NAAB represents a significant investment of public resource. And yet, as both BASW and the inspection report have noted, local authorities — the very agencies that the NAAB was established to support — remain chronically under-resourced for this work. The pressure has been relieved in the short term, but the underlying capacity problem remains.

BASW has urged the government to focus on resourcing local authorities so that social workers already embedded in direct work with young people have the time and space to conduct thorough, trauma-informed assessments themselves. I agree with that position.

I would add that commissioning independent assessments — in cases where a genuine conflict of interest exists, where a young person is challenging an existing decision, or where legal proceedings require objective expert evidence — is another appropriate use of that resource. Independent assessment keeps the function outside both the local authority and the Home Office framework, and places the professional responsibility firmly with the individual assessors and their regulatory obligations.

Neither of these is a simple solution. Recruiting and retaining experienced UASC social workers is genuinely difficult. The independent assessment market is still developing. But these are structural investments that build long-term capacity rather than creating a parallel system that — as the inspection report suggests — may be struggling to meet even its own standards after three years of operation.

A FINAL THOUGHT

I do not think the NAAB was established in bad faith, and I do not think the social workers within it are anything other than committed professionals. The pressure on local authorities is real, and the intention to provide support is genuine.

But the inspection report published in August 2025 raises questions that deserve a serious response — not just from the Home Office, but from the sector as a whole. If Merton-compliant age assessment is to mean anything, the structural conditions for genuinely independent, trauma-informed practice must be right. At present, there are good reasons to question whether the NAAB model provides them.

That is not a comfortable thing to say. But it is what professional honesty requires.

Matt Vincent is a Registered Social Worker (SW35797) and Senior assessor at Independent Migrant Services. He has over 25 years' experience in children's services, including nine years managing a specialist Children's Asylum Team. IMS provides Merton-compliant independent age assessments for local authorities and legal firms across England, Wales, and Scotland.

independentmigrantservices.com · info@independentmigrantservices.co.uk

Sources referenced:

• BASW UK Statement: National Age Assessment Board (March 2023) — basw.co.uk

• BASW: 3 Years On — Review of the National Age Assessment Board (2026) — basw.co.uk

• Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration: Inspection of the NAAB (August 2025) — reported in Community Care, 20 August 2025