Thousands of severely disabled young people are being let down by local authorities who fail to plan care for them as adults, a report has said.
The Commission for Social Care Inspection is calling for urgent action to ensure disabled children continue to get the help they need into adulthood.
Inspectors found many have no idea where they will live or who will look after them when they grow up.
Social services directors stressed the issue was being made a top priority.
But the report criticises local authorities not only for failing to plan ahead, but also for failing to consult young people about their futures.
Less money
Half the 52 authorities surveyed in the report said that they had much less money to spend on disabled adults than on disabled children - which made it impossible to offer them the same levels of care.
"It is a waste of resources - as well as a waste of young people's potential - if the support they are given as children is not continued into adulthood"
Dame Denise Platt, CSCI chairman, said: "Our study shows that councils need to start planning early to ensure that young people with disabilities have the chance to lead as independent a life as possible once they reach adulthood.
"Young people should expect to maintain their quality of life as they move into adults' services.
"It is a waste of resources - as well as a waste of young people's potential - if the support they are given as children is not continued into adulthood, and if they end up in expensive residential care that restricts their independence, often many miles away from their own home."
The report calls for councils and primary care trusts to work together to develop and commission seamless services that offer choice and independence to people with complex needs as they go from childhood to adulthood.
It says improvements have already taken place in some areas of the country but generally there is inadequate commissioning of services, poor co-ordination and a failure to properly plan ahead with young people and their families.
This results in delays, multiple assessments, confusion and anxiety for all concerned, it says.
Chasm
"This report exposes the effects that the cold, dead hand of adult social services has on young disabled teenagers wanting to make their way in adult life"
Agnes Fletcher, director of policy and communications at the Disability Rights Commission, said there was a chasm between the support disabled people received in childhood, and as adults.
She said: "This report exposes the effects that the cold, dead hand of adult social services has on young disabled teenagers wanting to make their way in adult life.
"Many of these young people will be forced to forget their aspirations of going on to further education or being supported to live independently.
"Families have to negotiate a cats cradle of costly red tape, but tightening eligibility criteria mean that incredible strains are placed on parents to negotiate support from a system that rarely provides what is actually needed.
"Without the proper investment in these services, these families are steered into a spiral of dependency and poverty.
"Young adults are forced back on their parents to meet their care needs, parents are forced to give up work and on to the benefit system with no possible means of escape."
Priority
John Coughlan, president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, said: "We acknowledge that where barriers are drawn between age groups, then the closest attention possible has to be focused on ensuring that people supported by social care services and moving from one age range to another are carefully monitored.
"There are bound to be 'conflicts of eligibility criteria' not just for services as between age groups, but between different local authorities geographically.
"It is vitally important that adults and children's services persistently keep their eye on the transitions ball, especially now that two, instead of one, local authority department are responsible for commissioning and providing social care."
About 13,000 young people with disabilities are in long-term residential care in the UK at any time.
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