Profiting from children subject to state care: Is business involvement a sustainable investment?

Even Charles Dickens might be lost for words to describe the predicament of vulnerable children in state care and their exploitation for profit in the 2020s. In his Hard Times (1853) he outlined the ‘Gradgrind philosophy’:

‘… that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything or render anybody help without purchase … Every inch of the existence of mankind from birth to death was to be a bargain across a counter.’ (Charles Dickens  Hard Times (OUP 1989) Chapter VIII Garnering p384.)

Worldwide private companies and investors are increasingly involved in the delivery of essential public services social and elderly care. In the UK this manifests prominently in the private children’s home sector. As we highlight in this piece the care of some of our society’s most vulnerable children namely those subject to care and often accompanying Deprivation of Liberty Orders has become a lucrative source of revenue for corporations and investors. Yet a growing body of evidence highlights the negative consequences for human...

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