Grown men pretending to be children

[Happypie]

AIBU to be very worried that safeguarding has broken down in England. I have worked in several schools in London where some of the newly arrived “children” were grown men. We have complained to social services and they admitted that the pupils were blatantly men but there was nothing they could do.
These men are being put into classes and foster homes with actual children.
We do not allow adults without DBS checks to have unfettered access to children unless they pretend to be children.
Head teachers hands are also tied. The only way to change things seems to be through parent complaints like in the story below. This is not safeguarding. www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-suffolk-46070239

Everyone thought it was cute in that Drew Barrymore film though....

I think there is absolutely fault on the part of the school, but do I blame the man? Absolutely not. If I came from a war zone and found my qualifications invalid I would do anything I could to make a better life for my children.

DS had an X-ray to check on slow growth. The doctor managed to pin his age down to an exact year and month.

X-raying these men is not unethical ffs.

They aren’t doing it for the education. They are doing it so they are allowed to stay in the UK as unaccompanied minors.

Thers seem to be too much varraition with the teeth to be particularly useful for telling aging.

inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/cant-tell-someones-age-teeth/
Third molars, or wisdom teeth, are often used to estimate age because they develop much later than other teeth. But their growth varies hugely from individual to individual – some people may get them aged 15, others aged 25.

I'm sure they do try and age people - but I think they have to use a range of indicators.

DS had an X-ray to check on slow growth. The doctor managed to pin his age down to an exact year and month.

How can that be true - as my Ds was sent to whole mouth x-ray because he is very late to lose all his milk teeth - they are all lurking there he's just later than most and there's no family history of that either or any prior indicators like getting the milk teeth late.

He's later than many of his peers with growth spurt and sizes but certaitly not the only one.

That article OP has linked to is from 1995? Is this really a current 'thing'??

Can't they check their teeth or something to determine their age (I'm sure I read that is the way to predict accurate age)?

That photo does look like a man older than 15 - which does make you wonder why it wasn't questioned and what checks were missed.

He had a bone X-ray not a tooth X-ray. It was of his wrist and came out as 10 years and 1 month old. He was actually 10 years and 6 months old but the doctor told us there is a standard deviation of 6 months

I’m happy to post the report!

I thought this thread was going to be about 'trans-age' men!

I used to teach Nursery/Reception and other lower years and we got a few immigrant children who were blatantly way older than 4 or 5.

The article the OP has linked is from 2 days ago Pigeon.

That article OP has linked to is from 1995? Is this really a current 'thing'??

It said 2nd Nov 2018 when I opened it?

It is difficult to prove their age as they get a dodgy doctor to agree with them, and the only way to biologically disprove it is to analyse bones via an X-ray (unethical) or to do the same with teeth.

How is that in any way unethical? The world has gone mad!

Pigeon post the article is from 2nd Nov 2018.

Fuck that noise!

Tigerdrankall. You expressed everything I feel about the need for Safeguarding a lot more eloquently than I could.

Penis beaker are you hearing noises?

I don't understand why they can't just say to them you are obviously not a child, piss off to the appropriate department.

This country really has gone mad.

NC because this is outing. I live round the corner from this school and have seen this "child" with my own eyes. There is no way on earth that he is a teenager. He's easily in his late twenties/early thirties. It worries me that adults are being allowed into classes with impressionable young teenagers. How the head thought you hat this wasn't a safeguarding issue, I'll never know. I seriously hope that my own DC get a place in a different school, not Stoke.

Unethical to do an x-ray but not unethical to lie about your age, potentially expose children, teenagers and the vulnerable to predatory adults, take a school place away from a real child etc etc.

Why do the rights of this adult trump the rights of the children he is at school with?

www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428644-300-with-no-paper-trail-can-science-determine-age/

attempts to assess age with X-ray scans of teeth or wrists are doomed to failure, according to work to be published this week in the British Medical Bulletin. The fundamental flaw with such tests is that, because children grow at widely different rates, skeletal maturity shown on X-rays – which is used to gauge age – doesn’t necessarily match chronological age. Teenagers can have adult bone structure as early as 15 or later than 20, says study author Tim Cole at University College London (UCL). He says X-rays can provide the wrong answer about whether someone is under or over 18 up to a third of the time.

In wrist scans, age is estimated by looking at 20 or so bones initially separated by cartilage, but which progressively move closer to one another until they fuse in the mature wrist. The reference used for this test is a 1959 atlas compiled for doctors to assess healthy bone development, not age. It includes 1000 X-ray images of wrists of white middle-class American children, and the fully mature wrist of a 19-year-old. Yet wrists can be fully mature in children as young as 15, says Cole. A rival atlas compiled a few years later indicates a mean chronological age for wrist maturity of 17.6 years – give or take 1.3 years. So most “children” have “adult” wrists before 18.

I'm not saying age can't be figure out or that bone and teeth can't form part of that picture - I'm pointing out there's credible research showing there are issues with both bone and teeth x-rays and aging.

I'd agree with the articles conclusion

the best hope is in detailed assessments of physical and psychological development by specially trained paediatricians, skilled in combining different aspects of growth to make an informed estimate of age. It is crucial to chart a new way forward, he says: “Governments must stop believing that there is a ‘scientific’ test that will tell precisely the age of individuals claiming to be children but without papers to prove it.”

It is not unethical to x-ray people for a legitimate purpose (determining if they are children or not, where there is doubt).

The radiation dosage from different age x-rays are:

hand x-ray 0.0001 mSv
Orthopantomogram 0.026 mSv
Computed tomograpy of medial clavicular epiphysis 0.4 mSv

This results in:

Ossification of the hand skeleton complete (minimum age 16.1 for males, lower for females)
Mineralization of lower molars complete (minimum age 17.3 for males)
Ossification of the medial clavicular epiphyses complete (minimum age of 20 years, the previous stage occurs at age 16.4)

The annual background radiation dosage in the UK is 2.7 mSv. In Cornwall this can reach 7.8 mSv (due to radon).

the thought that they are predatory straight away is quite a leap..

The thought that teachers, lunchtime supervisors, teaching assistants and adult over 18 is predatory straight away is quite a leap, but they still all have to have DBS checks. Why is that? Is safeguarding mean to people when it has blanket class protections?

If you're on a school trip with secondary aged kids and one of them turns 18 while you're away with them, your safeguarding actually has to take note of the fact they are now an adult, even though a few hours ago they weren't. This 'we can't say this'/'it's not quite nice/comfortable to suggest that about a protected group I want to show my support for' / 'but poor adult, we should meet their needs' is the root of a whole lot of serious case reviews where children have been seriously harmed or killed.

Safeguarding cannot be sentimental.

Because then we’d have all the woke people screaming we’re sending “unaccompanied minors” to adult detention centres.

Anyone claiming UM status should be examined by a doctor and submit to a growth X-ray. There may be a tiny margin of doubt in the middle and I’d be happy to have those people given the benefit of the doubt. But just taking any one on their word is beyond ridiculous and gives the alt right even more ammo!