Providing homes for young people is not just another public service. Transformative change is needed
The creation of a market in children’s social care was a terrible mistake. Its origins lie in the introduction of compulsory competitive tendering in the 1980s, along with the health service internal market – a model that spread to other sectors. New Labour also failed to draw a necessary line. Amid the general encouragement of outsourcing, despite its drawbacks, successive governments have failed to recognise that the provision of home life to children is qualitatively different from any other function of the state.
In the past few decades, children’s social care has been mainly privatised. The most vulnerable children in British society are commodities to be traded, regarded by investors across the world as an investment opportunity. “A business where people are able to crystallise value today” is how co-founder Farouq Sheikh describes CareTech, the biggest provider of children’s homes in the UK. He and his brother are now taking the business private with a bid that values it at £1.2bn – and loads it up with £258m of debt.
