3. Only short form Local Authority assessment has been done

Aim at this stage:

Refer to a Community care solicitor - this can take time, so it’s important to start as soon as possible

AND

If you feel confident, try to determine if the assessment was unfair (see below) and advocate for the young people with the Local Authority </aside>

When does a short form assessment happen?

For the most part, short form assessments (also called a “brief enquiry”) happen after a ‘Child in Need’ referral to the Local Authority, and the child is visited in adult accommodation by Local Authority social workers. However, they can also happen from within Local Authority care.

How do I know if they have had a short or a long check?

The assessment takes the form of a brief conversation with the young person, in which the assessors will consider the individual’s physical presentation, demeanour, behaviour, and consistency of the oral account of their age.

The Local Authority social workers will then determine, based on their interaction with the young person and information received, whether or not it is ‘clear and obvious’ that they are an adult and not a child as they claim.

If they cannot be sure that it is a ‘clear and obvious’ case, they are required to accommodate the young person and provide services in line with their claimed age, at least until the conclusion of a long form ‘Merton-compliant’ age assessment.

A long form assessment is conducted over a series of dates in which the age assessors obtain detailed information from the young person about their life, then analysing that information and cross-examining it with other information given by the young person (e.g. in their Home Office initial contact interview) to determine their credibility.

After a short form assessment, the young person should get a short letter explaining when and why the decision was made (usually because they look much older than 18). If they had a long form assessment check (also called a Merton compliant assessment), they should get a much longer document that could be up to 100 pages.

Learn more about short and long form assessments here.

Your action #1: The priority is always to get a solicitor involved.

Sometimes a young person’s asylum solicitor will agree to help, but more often a separate Community Care solicitor is needed.

Your action #2: Challenging the Local Authority yourself

Sometimes we can help challenge a short form assessment decision while getting a solicitor involved. This can happen if something was clearly wrong or unfair - like using the wrong language interpreter, or if the Local Authority ignored important proof about the person's age. If we can show the Local Authority made a big mistake, they might agree to do a new check or look after the person while they do another check. See template email.

Note: Challenging the Local Authority might involve sharing your opinion on the young person and their account. Be very careful with this - If what you say is different from what the young person has said, this could hurt their case. If you're not sure what to do, wait for a solicitor to become involved.

Action details

Note - The clock has started ticking on the 3 month time limit to go to judicial review from the date the age assessment was carried out - so time is of the essence

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Check whether their assessment was fair. We’ve created a checklist of questions for you to ask - See template