What does privatisation mean for care workers

 

What does privatisation mean for care workers?

From learning that most of the public sectors have been privatised since the 1980's I wanted to see what this actually means for care workers.

Over the last 20 years care work and care homes have been privatised while council budgets have been slashed.

95% of care homes were provided by the Government in 1993.

Two thirds of adult social care workers say that the quality of adult care has dropped because of the large-scale outsourcing since the early 90’s.

1 in 4 home care services are failing to meet the proper quality and safety standards.

220,000 care workers are paid less than the national minimum wage who are mostly women and migrants. They also very often are on zero hour contracts.

Care home providers are often large chains backed by private equity and relying on risky financial structures, in April 2019, Four Seasons health care went into administration and at that time had 22,000 people in their employment, with £500 million in debt.

Shareholders and private equity operators extract profit and cash from the system of around £760 million per year. 

Source