The Scope of Pediatric Forensic Psychiatric Evaluations in Student Run Asylum Clinics

Student-run asylum clinics (SRACs) are organizations that provide pro bono forensic medical evaluations to support the legal asylum cases of individuals seeking refuge away from their home country, increasing the likelihood that asylum status is granted. Although thousands of children seek asylum in the U.S. every year, there are fewer forensic medical evaluations performed for children relative to adults. This cross-sectional survey study investigates the extent of forensic medical evaluation services provided to children by SRACs in the United States. An online, cross-sectional survey evaluating the scope of pediatric practice and barriers to completing pediatric forensic evaluations was distributed to 27 student-run asylum clinics. Of fourteen organizations that completed the survey, 35.7% (n = 5) received referrals in the past year for pediatric forensic evaluations, while 92.9% (n = 13) received referrals for adult evaluations. 53.8% (n = 7) of respondents indicated that a barrier to performing pediatric evaluations was a limited number of physicians specialized in this area. There is likely an unmet need for pediatric forensic medical evaluations, and a significant barrier is a shortage of physicians specialized in performing these evaluations. Given the large volume of children who seek asylum in the United States every year, it is imperative to train additional physicians to perform pediatric evaluations to expand asylum services nationwide to children.