How outsourcing has contributed to England's social care crisis

Abstract

Benjamin Goodair and colleagues argue that growth of private provision in adult social care in England has resulted in worse care and should be rolled back

Fig 1

Local authority expenditure on public social care services in England, 2001-2023. Data collection processes changed in 2015 and spending before and after 2015 is not directly comparable. Spending on public services fell by 37.8% in 2001-14 and 29.2% in 2015-23. Taken together, we estimate a decline of 56% in 2000- 23