Social care is delivered by around 150 local authorities in England and some 25,000 independent organisations, including private for-profit, private not-for-profit and voluntary. Although the social care sector has a number of big players, it is dominated by small and medium sized employers. This has implications for the workforce in terms of training, career development and job security in parts of the social care sector. The private sector provides the vast majority of publicly funded care service and accounts for more than 60% of the overall workforce. Yet despite the growing importance of the private sector, government policies remain a key driver of the sector.

At the heart of the government’s agenda is the modernisation of social services that includes:

• the provision of user-centred services, often in co-operation with other agencies
• a better trained workforce to improve the quality of services
• regulations aimed to drive up standards, such as the new national minimum standards or performance indicators
• the so-called Best Value policy, aimed to improve the efficiency of public services provision

As a result of the latter, local authorities have been under increased pressure to outsource services to the private sector.