1. From January to June 2023, how many individuals claiming to be children (aged under 18) were referred to your children’s services department, having previously been assessed to be an adult by the Home Office and placed in adult asylum accommodation or detention?
2. Of those referred, how many were subsequently assessed by your children’s services department to be under 18?
Devon County Council believes compliance with these requests would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time.
Age assessments for asylum seeking young people are not widely recorded ie. we may only find evidence where a young person has been referred to us for services and then considered to be over 18.
The data we do hold is not in a reportable format, therefore to find and retrieve it would require a manual check of each care record. On average it would take 15 minutes per record to search and retrieve the requested information. Some of these cases would then need to be cross referenced with the social worker due to the way the information is held. Due to the number of records we hold, this would take in excess of 21 hours of officer time, therefore this request has been refused.
In the interests of providing advice and assistance we are able to tell you that between January and June 2023, there were 83 asylum seeking children in the care of the Council.