‘I was given days to find myself a place to live’: autistic teenager on care home eviction

‘I felt I had been stabbed in the back’: Callum McDonald, whose care home closed at short notice, at his father’s house. Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Observer

It was the most brutal start to the new year imaginable for Callum McDonald. The autistic teenager was given four weeks to leave the children’s home where he had lived for five years by the Outcomes First Group, one of the country’s largest for-profit care chains.

“[Outcomes First] were completely indifferent. I was basically left to fend for myself,” said McDonald, 18, who was taken into care when he was eight years old. “I couldn’t find anywhere to stay because it happened so quickly. There wasn’t any transition period. It was just 28 days to be gone.”