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'On average, for-profit care homes are worse quality and more selective than publicly-owned provision – and yet the for-profit sector has come to dominate the landscape in England's social care', says Benjamin Goodair from the Blavatnik School of Government's Government Outcomes Lab, lead author of the article, which is based on research funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
Social care (sometimes referred to as community, residential, or personalised care) for older people and people with physical and mental disabilities is facing record demand in England, but is performing worse than any time in recent history, the Oxford University authors explain.
Their research into the outsourcing of social care services tracks the levels of social care outsourcing in unprecedented granularity, revealing the near ending of publicly-owned residential care. In the UK, social care in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is devolved, so they examined England data specifically.
One contributor to this, they say, is the outsourcing of care provision from the public to the private sector. Figures suggest that the share of adult social care that is publicly provided has fallen from 42% to 9% since 2001.
Although competition from private sector provision was championed as a solution to achieve cheaper and better-quality care, the authors point to evidence from the past few decades in the UK and elsewhere that challenges this view.
Read the full story on the University of Oxford website.