Private Equity & Vulnerable Children Don't Mix

Azimuth Advisor Claire Methven O'Brien writes today about a UK case in which a 12-year-old child was placed in a care facility run by a private corporation. The result was an abusive series of events, including unlawful physical restraints, deep neglect, isolation from family visits, and more.

According to Methven O'Brien and her co-author, Rebekah Wilson, 75% of children's care homes in the UK are private. The child-care market is big business, amounting to over 6 billion British pounds.

The sector is rife with economic misdeeds. According to Methven O'Brien and Wilson, "the prices charged by private children’s home companies to local governments have dramatically increased by 84% in the UK since 2015....[and] as a UK regulator recently found, corporate children’s homes are 'making materially higher profits' than they should be able to in an ‘effectively functioning’ market."

Azimuth Advisor Claire Methven O'Brien, an expert on corporate social responsibility, teaches at the University of Dundee and is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights.