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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Long-term care
— from public responsibility to private good | | Author(s) | Stewart Player, Allyson M Pollock |
| Journal title | Critical Social Policy, issue 67, vol 21, no 2, May 2001 |
| Pages | pp 231-255 |
| Keywords | Organisation of care ; Services ; Health services ; Long term ; Economics ; Social policy ; Private enterprise ; Commercial care. |
| Annotation | Long-term care with its vulnerable client base is an important example of how care has become a private responsibility with little or no debate or discussion. This article charts the trajectory and structure of the market in long-term care provision from its "cottage industry" beginnings to an increasing dominance by generic, often publicly-quoted multinational corporations. It shows how the privatisation of funding was accompanied by transferring responsibility for payment of care from central to local government in 1993, and how the introduction of eligibility criteria and the shrinking public provision has made care a private and personal responsibility. Government is now encouraging companies to diversify into specialist high-cost areas such as diagnostics, acute psychiatric care and acute hospital and intermediate care. Long-term care is increasingly seen as a lower profit "core" industrial package predicated on basic services and casualised, low wage labour. The extension of this commodification of the care process to other areas of the NHS has serious implications for the health and well-being of the whole population, not just the most frail and vulnerable. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-010809001 A |
| Classmark | P: I: L: 4Q: W: TM2: W4D: PI |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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