Care standards dropping due to privatisation

A new report has argued that the quality of adult social care has declined as a result of increased privatisation in the sector.

The Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) has argued that despite 41 per cent of community-based and residential social care having been found by the Care Quality Commission to be inadequate or requiring improvement since 2014, it has no power to intervene to prevent a company from collapsing.

Additionally, the CHPI warned that private social care sector workers are paid ‘considerably’ lower rates than by councils, with a higher turnover of staff.

The report, The failure of privatised adult social care in England: what is to be done?, also calls for new measures to be introduced to bring about a more effective way of regulating the market.

This would include: a transparency test, whereby the contractual arrangements with a private provider should be fully open; an accountability test, whereby the local electorate could demand the ending of a contract with a private provider if there are concerns about performance; a workforce test, whereby the contracts with private providers would have to include requirements guaranteeing certain terms and conditions of the workforce, and collective bargaining rights; and a taxation test, whereby private companies in receipt of public service contracts would be required to demonstrate that they were domiciled in the UK and subject to UK taxation law.