Top council officers and senior councillors have made a surprise admission in the case of a Norfolk family with a disabled son, admitting they were unaware of a series of failures until a watchdog ordered further investigation into the matter.
The surprise admission came after watchdogs took the unprecedented step of referring the case to county councillors, so they could quiz their own officers about the failings.
The Local Government Ombudsman found Norfolk County Council failed to put together a legal care and support plan for the man, or an assessment for his mother, who was caring for him.
County Hall also bungled direct payments to the family and ended up owing them thousands of pounds.
The ombudsman found it had caused the family "distress".
It ordered the council to apologise, to pay compensation and to ensure care and support plans were put in place, which the council has done.
But the ombudsman also told the cross-party scrutiny committee to look in more depth at what went wrong.
At an August 21 meeting county councillors were surprised to hear that neither Debbie Bartlett, the interim director of adult social care, or Alison Thomas, cabinet member for adult social care, had known about the case until the scrutiny meeting agenda was published.
Mrs Thomas said: "I think it's fair to say that, from a cabinet member's perspective, this report does not make good reading. We have, very clearly, let this particular family down."
Steve Morphew, leader of the Labour group, said: "There's something wrong with the system if you didn't know about until it got to the point where it's been through all this lot."
He called for an independently chaired group of councillors to be set up to investigate issues, but that was rejected.
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The committee instead asked for a report to be drawn up, after a recommendation by Conservative Andrew Proctor.
It will look at internal and external communication, how to improve complaint handling and involve senior officers, and how to ensure assessment and care plans are completed.
Dan Roper, Liberal Democrat chairman of the committee, said it was important to establish if other vulnerable people had been similarly let down.
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