What is it about the attraction of governments to the almost guaranteed predation caused by funding private-enterprise care homes? The title above reflects a United Kingdom report on dreadfully bad care for youth with special needs. But all ages needing care seem to be a magnet for profit-hungry private care homes, whether the elderly, adults, or youth.
Horror stories abound. Are we looking at a conspiracy of silence here? Government funding and subsequent oversight seldom performed with integrity? Family caregivers exhausted by special need responsibilities and eager to blindly hand the burden onwards to so-called professionals? Free enterprise corporations prepared to deliver minimum shelter standards and terrorist neglect masquerading as support, which guarantee a minimum of inmate complaints on the way maximizing profits?
Whatever allows this symbiotic conspiracy of oversight indifference, human exploitation and greed, it is a constant tragedy that underpins neoliberal political thinking, which proposes that private enterprise can ‘do it better.’ Perhaps it can. But tragically, left to its own devices, it won’t. And left to its own devices, never will.
Housing? In the very meanest sense of the word. Adequate? Hardly. We’re looking at abject betrayal of any commitment to the United Nations call for a universal right to adequate housing.
Read more in The Guardian: Urgent Calls For Reform After Horrific Abuse Of Young People At Private Care Homes
