Council criticised for second time in two years over support to young homeless

The Local Government Ombudsman has issued a second critical report in two years about the way Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council supports young homeless people.

The Ombudsman said the local authority’s action had left a vulnerable teenager without proper support after she was made homeless by her parents.

This was despite the council assuring the LGO it had improved its procedures following an investigation into a similar complaint in 2014.

In the first investigation a homeless teenager, who had been threatened by her family, was told she was not the authority’s responsibility and to return home.

In response to the LGO’s report Doncaster changed its protocol on 16 and 17 year olds in housing need.

The Ombudsman has now found that, just a few months after the new policy had been agreed, the local authority again failed to act properly when a teenager called on it for support.

In the second case a 16-year-old had been living with her mother when she was thrown out of her house in December 2014.

The latest report said that social services had been involved with the family for a number of years, because of the parents’ use of alcohol and drugs, allegations of domestic violence and the girl’s own consequent mental health problems.

The girl explained that at the beginning of December 2014 her mother returned home drunk and she was told to leave home in the middle of the night. She stayed with a friend and made a homelessness application to the council.

Doncaster placed her in interim accommodation, where she relied on food parcels and emergency money for food and clothing.

Later that month a social work manager decided that the girl was not homeless as she could return to live with her father – despite his drink and drug problems and history of emotional abuse – and that there was no need to complete a child in need assessment.

In early January 2015, the girl left the interim accommodation for a young people’s hostel. The council did not send her a decision on her homelessness application. Five days later she attended a meeting and was told social services could complete an assessment if she wanted to be placed in foster care, which she refused.

The council should have explained the whole variety of support options that might have been available as well as foster care, had she been assessed, the LGO said.

The social worker felt the teenager was refusing to be assessed, had a parent who was willing to look after her and believed she just wanted to choose her own accommodation.

By March 2015 social care records showed the girl was living in a hostel with no contact with either parent. The girl has received no support from social services since this time.

In April, police told social services that the girl's boyfriend had been warned about harassing her. The girl had been prescribed anti-depressants by her doctor. Despite this, she was attending school and still hopes to go to university.

An advocate complained to the Ombudsman on the teenager’s behalf and an investigation found the council’s children’s services team failed to follow national guidance and its own policy on dealing with homeless young people and so did not assess her properly or properly consider whether it should provide her with support and somewhere to live.

“This meant she had to find her own accommodation and received very limited support. Since becoming homeless her mental health has deteriorated,” the LGO said.

The Ombudsman’s report added that the council did not take into account the earlier referrals made about the girl, including significant concerns expressed by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) and her school before deciding it should not help her.

To remedy the complaint, the LGO recommended that Doncaster:

• Apologise to the girl for its failure to properly assess her in December 2014;
• Pay her £2,000 to acknowledge the avoidable distress caused and limited support provided to her from December 2014 “when in all probability she met the criteria to be considered a child in need of accommodation under section 20 of the Children Act 1989”. This payment would also recognise the avoidable time and trouble caused by X having to seek alternative accommodation;
• Backdate its s. 20 duty to support her to December 2014 ensuring that she will be eligible for the relevant leaving care support;
• Provide training to all relevant staff on the council’s responsibilities for assessing homeless 16 and 17 year-olds and ensure that in future it always issues a decision on homeless applications; and
• Explain how it will ensure that in future homeless 16 and 17 year-olds are properly assessed, “given changes to practice agreed as a result of [the LGO’s] earlier investigation and report….do not seem to have been effective”.

The council has accepted the recommendations.

Dr Jane Martin, Local Government Ombudsman, said: “The suffering this young woman has gone through could have been prevented if the council had learnt the lessons from our report last year. It is not enough to simply change a policy, officers need to be aware of and implement those changes too.

“While I am pleased that Doncaster council has accepted my recommendations it is disappointing that more concrete improvements were not made after my previous investigation. I hope that the opportunity will now be taken to ensure that a situation like this cannot happen again.”