A teenager with autism was on the brink of being made homeless after Devon County Council failed to plan his care properly as he approached 18.

The damning case has been flagged by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO), which opted to make it a so-called ‘public interest’ case that requires the incident to be publicised.

The ombudsman said the teenager – identified as Mr C – had been living in a children’s home where he was allowed to remain beyond his eighteenth birthday in assisted adjacent living accommodation, but a lack of planning between the authority’s children’s and adult services meant he was only found a place at the eleventh hour.

This accommodation was 40 miles from his mother, who did not drive, and 60 miles away from his educational placement, even though no transport was provided.

“This young man had been on the council’s radar for years, so it is unfathomable why it took so long to begin planning for how he would transition from children’s to adult services when he turned 18,” ombudsman Amerdeep Somal said.

“This inertia by the council, and the lack of joined-up working between departments, led to a young man – who needs stability, security and routine – having his world rocked by the uncertainty of where he would be living in future.”

Ms Somal said the indecision was “triggered primarily by the council’s adult services department’s reluctance to pay for the accommodation.

“Its decision not to allow him to remain there was purely financially driven, taking no account of the significant effect this would have on his needs,” she continued.

Some members of Devon County Council’s standards committee hearing about the case this week were shocked that Mr C had been told one of his options was to “present himself as homeless”.

Senior managers intervened to halt that decision.

At the standards committee, council officers offered frank admissions of what went wrong.

Gary Patch, head of integrated adult social care, said he often attended the committee with reports about positive achievements or new developments within his service, but “today is not one of those days.

“Mr C isn’t reflective of our best work, and we acknowledge failings on our part,” he said.

“Admitting those is never easy, but as painful as it is, it does offer us some valuable lessons.

“We need to take these opportunities to improve and understand where things didn’t go well and ensure we do better.”

Cllr Alan Connett (Liberal Democrat, Exminster and Haldon) called it a “horrendous report” and raised concerns that Mr C had initial contact with adult social service in 2020 yet ended up as an example of how cases shouldn’t be handled.

“I acknowledge what officers have said in terms of learning from this report, but I can’t get away too easily form the fact that Mr C was first engaged when he was 15-and-a-half years old,” he said.

“It’s not something that happened in a few months [before his eighteenth birthday] and officers were packing this in to a short period of time and some balls were dropped.”

Cllr Connett asked whether children’s social services workers could now be confident their adult services colleagues were picking cases up.

Tandra Forster, director of integrated adult social case since August 2022, thought that in terms of acknowledging mistakes, the council is “owning it”.

“Work on transitions (between children’s and adult services) is ongoing, we have put more staff in and there is a new leadership in the team,” she said.

“We are also working on making sure there are strong links between our health services, children’s social care and SEND to improve the experience of transitioning.”

Key issues that officers identified were the delay in adult social care’s deep involvement that meant decisions about Mr C were made too close to his move from children’s to adult social care, inadequate early engagement given Mr C’s known additional needs, and poor communication between the two departments.

Mr Patch acknowledged there had been a “binary perception in terms of responsibility” for Mr C, and that other teams that dealt with transport and special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) were not engaged collaboratively.

The authority said it “accepts in full” the ombudsman’s recommendations, has written to apologise to Mr C and his mother, and paid him compensation of £1,000 and her £250.

The county council will now also ensure work begins early for individuals moving to adult social care in the next two years, and is creating a forum to discuss people who meet specific criteria (such as self-harming behaviour), have additional needs, or may struggle to be accommodated after they turn 18.