REPORT LAUNCH | Careless Profiteering

An investigation into the financialisation of care homes

Today, the Public Interest Law Centre, Corporate Watch, and Good Jobs First, Violation Tracker UK, launched Careless Profiteering, a report examining the exploitative business models, finances, and ownership structures which extract money from UK care homes at the expense of patient care and dignity, safe working conditions, and adequate pay for frontline staff.

The report was commissioned as part of PILC’s involvement with Module 6 of the Covid-19 Public Inquiry, where we represented the Frontline Migrant Health Workers’ Group, which was comprised of  United Voices of the World (UVW) & the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) trade unions, and Kanlungan, a charity supporting and representing Filipino and East and Southeast Asian migrant workers in the UK. Our clients fought to ensure the Inquiry included the voices of precariously employed workers across the social care sector, working in care homes, agencies, and private households, and for recognition of the disproportionate impact the pandemic had on them.

The report reveals that US hedge funds, billionaires based abroad, and private equity firms registered in tax havens dominate the care home sector. Using some of the UK’s largest providers - HC-One,Barchester Healthcare, Care UK, and Advinia Health Care – as case studies, the report explores how they use complex structures to extract wealth for their owners. For example, by incurring huge levels of debt at high interest rates, providers are able to reduce their tax bills whilst the burden of repayment and the associated risks are saddled by the care home staff and residents. Similarly, providers use sale and leaseback arrangements to effectively act as both tenant and landlord, thus paying itself huge amounts in rent. As such, money coming from government contracts, the NHS, local authorities, and residents’ fees, and is siphoned off to profiteers, rather than being invested back into the care sector or workers’ wages. Simultaneously, workers are subject to inadequate conditions including low pay, precarious employment, and shocking sick-pay policies, all of which hinder the ability to provide care.  

These providers treat care homes as merely assets and means for wealth extraction for personal gain, draining the system at a huge human cost to workers and patients. This must urgently change.

Take Action

If you wish to get further involved, the Frontline Migrant Health Workers’ Group organisations are undertaking a variety of projects and campaigns to improve the working conditions in the care sector:  

• You can find out more about UVW and their historic wins here. They bring together hundreds of workers across several sectors including the care sector, many of whom worked on the frontline in care homes during the pandemic as carers, cleaners, porters and kitchen staff.

• IWGB have members across a number of charities providing supported living services and advising disabled people of their rights, and its service sector branch comprises couriers and cleaners in outsourced positions whose vital services to the adult care sector are often overlooked. You can read more about their campaigns here and their Migrant Worker’s Guide here.

• The Philippine government says that about one-third of its 10 million citizens overseas are women working as domestic workers and carers, equating to roughly one quarter of the estimated number of migrant domestic workers worldwide. Kanlungan acts across the UK to empower Filipino, East, and Southeast Asian migrant workers, with many service users in the UK on visas which are attached to their work, such as domestic workers and health and social care workers. You can read more about their projects and join their empowered domestic workers group here.

Download

To make this research as accessible as possible, we have created a summary report explaining the key information you need to know to empower workers and those they care for in fighting for better pay and conditions. 

A summary report can be downloaded here.  

An extended version of the report can be downloaded here.