Evidencing the outsourcing of social care provision in England
CUSP partnering in new database development project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation
May 2023
CUSP Research Fellow Dr Christine Corlet Walker is collaborating with researchers from the University of Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention on a 16-month project, aiming to create a longitudinal data resource, enabling in-depth investigation of the impact of outsourcing social care provision in England.
The social care sector in England promotes the outsourcing of children’s and adult social care to private providers. Supporters of this model claim that the marketisation of social care fosters competition and reduces the inefficiencies of a state monopoly. However, research suggests that private providers perform less well than their non-profit and public counterparts. Nevertheless, the promise of reduced costs and improved services makes outsourcing appealing to policymakers, and more so during periods of austerity.
Regulating and improving the sector is made difficult by a lack of information on the impact and degree to which local authorities have outsourced their services. In response to this challenge, the research team at Oxford and CUSP will work with a cross-sector advisory group to create a novel longitudinal data resource of routinely collected data on providers, commissioners, and service users of children and adult social care. Separate datasets will be produced for adult and children’s social care, spanning 2012 to 2023. This dataset will provide an empirical foundation to inform key policy debates on the future provision of social care and further research.
The project runs from April 2023 to July 2024. For further details please see the Nuffield Foundation website. For inquiries, please email info@cusp.ac.uk.
