PROFIT
Welcome to your weekly blog post. Every week, I share with you my thinking on a residential care, foster care and/or transitioning from care topic. This week I’m talking about profits and the private sector. If you find this content relevant and useful, please feel free to forward it on to someone else.
In 2018, Jim Cockburn sold his controlling interest in Core Assets, which was the parent company of Foster Care Associates. The buyer was CapVest Partners. According to the UK advocacy group Corporate Watch, as well as private hospitals, CapVest’s business interests at that time included a Scandinavian rubbish collection company, an Irish biscuit company, and two abattoirs that slaughtered up to 45 thousand pigs a week. So although the leadership team were to be kept on, CapVest’s suitability to be running one of the country’s largest foster care agencies, was not exactly obvious.
Foster Care Associates was set up in 1986 by married couple Jim Cockburn and Jan Rees. Jim was a former social worker and Jan a former foster carer. While not the first independent foster care agency, they were certainly key figures in the ‘disruption’ of foster care in England. Essentially, they recognised that foster carers wanted and needed better support, and recruited them on that basis. They then contracted with local authorities, who were struggling to recruit (and retain) their own foster carers, to provide them with placements. Core Assets expanded both nationally and internationally (including the not-for-profit Key Assets organisations in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Japan which are now all part of Jim Cockburn’s new not-for-profit The Martin James Foundation). If media coverage is to be believed, the couple made millions.
By March 2019, over a third of children in foster care in England were placed with private Independent Fostering Agencies (IFAs) and almost of a third of those were with two single companies. And there have been similar English developments in residential care too. While they have since moved out of children’s services, the UK-based companies SERCO and G4S through the 2000s and 2010s were both major providers of secure care, and other forms of residential child care in England (these are both international conglomerates whose activities include running prisons, youth justice facilities, and immigration detention centres across many countries).
In other Anglo-American counties the picture is more mixed (and confusing as the terms foster care, private, independent and profit are used differently in different jurisdictions). To my knowledge (and I may be being naïve here) there is no private OOHC or related youth justice provision in New Zealand. In Australia there is some private provision in some states, which appears to be maintaining a remarkably low profile; such private provision may or may not be growing there. In Canada, there is a significant presence in some provinces, for example, in Ontario it has been estimated that 20% of those in foster care are placed with for-profit providers.
So should private provision be banned? Unethical practice certainly should be. Some unscrupulous private foster care agencies let government and not-for-profit agencies go to the time, effort and expense of recruiting, training and developing foster carers, only to offer these carers a ‘golden hello’ of say GBP3,000, and then seek to charge a very high fee for the existing placement to continue! And for me there is no place for poorly regulated or low quality private (or government or NGO) provision.
But beyond that, what do you think?
And as ever, thanks again from me for the important work that you do.
Kia kaha (Stay Strong).
Iain
PS – Ready when you are. Here are some ways I can help you:
Check out our website at http://betteroutcomes.org.nz and watch out for the new resources being added over the coming weeks. NEW one page summary of 2015 doctoral research on care leavers, care and education now available.
Online 3 month coaching program for managers or teams on extended foster care and accommodation for those transitioning from care. Email Iain for a brochure and/or conversation at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz
NEW Online 6 month coaching programme for managers or teams, on raising educational achievement. Email Iain for a brochure and/or conversation at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz
Work or partner with us at Better Outcomes on bespoke webinars, masterclasses, training, consultancy, or designing and delivering a research or evaluation project. Contact me at iain@betteroutcomes.org.nz so that we can explore ideas and both decide on whether we are a good fit for each other.