Competition in the Care Homes Market

Most long-term care in the UK is now delivered in markets, including both the private purchase of care and also publicly-funded care, commissioned on behalf of service recipients by public authorities. The widespread use of markets, an arrangement especially driven by New Right policies of the 80s and 90s, has nonetheless received relatively little critical evaluation. Most publicly funded long-term social care, as distinct from health care, is the responsibility of local authorities. Arguably many local authorities had taken the decision to out-source the provision of care because they anticipated savings in production costs (Wistow, Knapp et al. 1996). But there has been far less attention on the consequences of marketization for service recipients, the quality of care, and on the total costs of this policy, nor on wider impacts such as the effect on local labour markets.