Evaluating the outsourcing of social care in England

This project will develop novel evidence on the impact of outsourcing adult and children’s social care provision in England.

Why this project is important

In a previous Nuffield-funded project, the research team created a comprehensive, longitudinal data resource on outsourcing trends and their associations with key outcomes in adult and children’s social care provision in England. The project revealed that the outsourcing of residential services to private providers, especially for-profit companies, has increased substantially over the last 20 years. However, inspection ratings by industry regulators (the Care Quality Commission and Ofsted) consistently show that publicly operated and third sector adult care homes and children’s homes outperform those run by for-profit providers on measures of quality.

Outsourcing continues to be proposed as a solution to the concurrent problems of insufficient provision, higher need for services, and stringent public resources.

What will it involve?

This project aims to advance understanding of the impact of outsourcing and the relationship between contracting practices and quality of care provision. The research will be completed in three stages:

1. Examining the relationship between local authority characteristics and outsourcing, the impact of outsourcing on quality of and access to care, and trends in care homes and children’s homes openings and closures.
2. Connecting social care outcomes to contracting practices to shed light on how contractual terms align with service outcomes and care quality.
3. Working with practitioners through expert interviews and co-creation workshops to improve decision-making, policy making, commissioning practices, and service delivery.

How it will make a difference

This project will make a difference by developing evidence on the impacts of outsourcing on the quality of services, allowing us to understand the consequences for service users. This evidence will be supplemented with the experiences of social care commissioners to create experience-informed lessons for the improvement of social care. Ultimately, this research will answer important questions about the role of the private sector in delivering vital social care services, and directly work with those who are tasked with improving social care services locally.