Case of tent-dwelling teenager highlights councils' neglect of homeless

The case of a homeless 16-year-old boy who was forced to live in a tent after Kent and Dover councils failed to provide him with housing hit the headlines earlier this month.

He suffered physical and mental ill health during the nine months he spent sleeping in a tent, sometimes in snow.

The charity Shelter took up the boy's case and reported it to the Local Government Ombudsman, who ordered Kent and Dover to apologise to the young man and to pay him £10,100 compensation for a catalogue of "inexcusable" errors.

But the case has raised concerns that local authorities are failing to fulfil their legal duties to support homeless 16- and 17-year-olds.

Since the landmark Southwark judgment ruling in 2009, local authorities have been required to offer all homeless 16- and 17-year-olds care services under Section 20 of the Children Act 1989 (see box).

They are expected to have joint protocols in place between housing and children's services to set out procedures to assess and provide support to this vulnerable group, if necessary in partnership with district councils.

Jo Underwood is one of the solicitors who handled the boy's case on behalf of Shelter's children's legal service, which receives queries about homeless teenagers and local authority support on a weekly basis.

She says that both Kent County Council and Dover District Council had a joint protocol in place, but frontline staff were failing to adhere to the policy.

"We only see half of what happens, but for us to be getting weekly queries shows the problem is fairly widespread," she says. "Since the Southwark judgment, we've seen local authorities make more of an effort to get joint protocols into place. Now the issue is whether they actually follow them or not. The problem isn't going away because they have the joint protocols. Obviously there is no point in having a joint protocol in place if you're not going to make it available to staff and tell them about it. That partly comes down to staff training."

Cost of support
The cost of housing and providing care services to homeless 16- and 17-year-olds could also be deterring some councils from meeting their duties, Underwood warns. This is because homeless teenagers who do choose to claim care services are then eligible for leaving-care support up to the age of 21. This leaves councils with a massive bill on their hands.

"When local authorities accept their duties toward these teenagers, they then have a duty to look after and support them for a number of years, which costs a lot of money," Underwood says. "This can create a perverse incentive for local authorities. Obviously, no local authority is going to say that's the case, but that's the only conclusion we could come to."

She argues that councils will need to consider reallocating funding from other parts of their budgets to support this group, especially given the planned changes to housing benefit due to take effect from next year.

"Local authorities are going to have to start thinking creatively about where to get the funding from and how to manage their housing so they can provide for this group, particularly given the impending welfare reforms that are going to mean less support for under-25s claiming housing benefit," she says.

Holly Padfield-Paine is a development consultant on the Young People's Programme at the Law Centres Federation.

She argues that the Kent and Dover case has clearly highlighted the failure of council departments to comply with joint protocols.

With the help of city law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the federation has sent freedom of information requests to all local authorities in England asking for a copy of their joint protocol for dealing with homeless 16- and 17-year-olds. Padfield-Paine and her team are measuring the protocols against set criteria to establish whether the protocols accurately reflect the law and statutory guidance.

Falling through the net
"We want to get a picture of what councils are doing and highlight good practice as much as highlighting where local authorities are not meeting their duties," she says. "For those that are not following the law and statutory guidance, we hope to work with them to remedy this. While merely having a protocol in place cannot guarantee that vulnerable and homeless young people are helped, it does however go some way to stopping them falling through the gaps."

She hopes to have finished the work by mid-September, by which point the federation will make recommendations on what national and local government should do next.

"We're considering if there needs to be a central government response to protocols rather than leaving it to local authorities," she says. "Obviously we need flexibility for local variances, but we want to question whether there is a potential for a central government input."

Padfield-Paine hopes the project will also help prompt councils to come up with innovative solutions to funding services for homeless 16- and 17-year-olds.

"There is work to be done with local authorities addressing some of the fears they might have about the cost of accommodating young people," she says. "With the housing benefit changes coming, we need to find out if that is putting them off correctly implementing what should be in their protocols and address it."

Jenny Whittle, lead member for specialist children's services in Kent, says the council has substantially improved the way it deals with homeless young people since the case of the boy in the ombudsman report.

"We have already introduced a central duty team, led by social workers, to make sure referrals are dealt with in an efficient and timely way," she says. "Kent and its partners are working together more closely to protect and support vulnerable children, young people and their families."

A Dover District Council spokesman claims that the authority has also made improvements, including providing training on homeless 16- and 17-year-olds to all its housing advisers.

David Simmonds, chair of the Local Government Association's children and young people board, warns that councils have seen their costs rise by an estimated £160m per year since the Southwark judgment, while their budgets are being cut by £6.5bn over the current four-year spending period.

"Councils take their responsibilities towards young people extremely seriously and are well aware of their obligations towards this group," he says. "In the rare cases where they have fallen short, lessons will be learnt and improvements made."


The legal context