Camden Council compensates woman with autism after failing to properly assess her care needs

Camden Council has agreed to pay an autistic woman £2,600 for causing distress after it only offered her half of her mandated care support for over a year.

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) investigated a two-year period from when the resident, referred to as Ms X, first requested emergency care support from the council, and judged that Camden had dragged its heels and caused a series of delays, false starts and failure to fulfil the terms of her support plan.

This caused injustice to the woman and also failed to meet her family’s needs, resulting in “significant distress and frustration” and likely intensified her need for support, the watchdog found.

Despite the council accepting Ms X would get a care package of 128 hours a week, officers never actually commissioned the support. Her family only received an average of 69 hours per week between June 2024 and September 2025.

The council also did not act on Ms X’s complaints that her care workers could not cook her meals from scratch, even though this was mandated by her plan. Ms X claimed this had forced her to frequently spend money on takeaways.

Nor did the local authority respond to her concerns that her care providers misunderstood the support they were supposed to give her. After she formally complained about these problems in May 2024, it took the council over six months to respond. Delays to her needs assessments continued, however, even after the council appointed a social worker specifically to carry out her reviews nine months earlier.

Ms X also upbraided the council for repeatedly failing to follow her “communication passport”, mandating how the council should interact with her in a manner aligned to her needs. The passport noted that the local authority should, among other things, ensure its written correspondence was clear and jargon-free, pre-book phone calls, and have a trusted advocate of her choice present at meetings.

The repeated failure to stick to this exacerbated her distress and frustration, she said, and the Ombudsman upheld this part of her complaint.

The watchdog concluded: “It is likely the council’s delays impacted Ms X and the wider family and led to an increased need for support. However, Ms X and the family clearly missed out on a significant amount of support they should have received. It also caused them significant distress and frustration.”

Camden later admitted during its internal review into the saga that it misunderstood its own statutory duties under the Care Act, had failed to support Ms X when she was moving house, and had not been proactive with her case or supporting her family.

However, the LGSCO cleared the council of any fault over Ms X’s claim that she had been treated unfairly as a “vexatious” complainant because she submitted more than 40 complaints. The resident condemned the council for restricting her communications to a single, dedicated inbox – in line with its unreasonable behaviour policy – but the watchdog said the council had acted accordingly.

The council apologised to Ms X and, as per the watchdog’s instruction ,agreed to pay her an additional £500 on top of £2,100 it had already offered her in compensation. Since July 2025, she has been receiving an interim care package of 132 hours a week while waiting for her final assessment.

The council also confirmed its officers have since had mandatory autism training, and updated its autism strategy in September 2025.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a Camden Council spokesperson said: “We would like to again extend our sincere apologies to this resident and their family for the distress and frustration caused in this case. We recognise the significant challenges faced by the family and the impact that shortcomings in the assessment of their care needs, and delays in responding to concerns, have had on them.

“We have acted on all of the recommendations made, including providing additional compensation and putting care arrangements in place in line with our assessment and the agreed support plan.

“Getting the right support in place for families with multiple needs can be complex. Every family is different and our staff always work closely with those involved to provide immediate support and build the most appropriate longer term arrangements for them over time,” they said.

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman decision.

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