Prospecting for New Jobs to Combat Social Exclusion

Abstract

In its White Papers on European Social Policy and Growth, Competitiveness and Employment the European Commission (1994a; 1994b) highlighted the need to create alternative employment opportunities through the promotion of new fields of economic activity. The provision of services by non-statutory providers to older and disabled people in their own homes was one of the 19 employment fields identified (European Commission, 1998a). In the UK, considerable impetus has been given to the development of independent-sector domiciliary services by recent policies which combine care in the community with the introduction of competition to publicly funded social care. The responsibility for enabling social-care markets has been given to local authorities not in the capacity as main service provider, as historically was the case, but as the purchaser of services on behalf of individual users. This article explores the labour-market outcomes of local-authority contracting arrangements with independent-sector providers. It outlines providers’ arguments that current purchasing practices exacerbate the difficulties of recruiting, developing and retaining workers which arise from the highly fragmented nature of home-care itself. Importantly, existing outcomes appear counterproductive to the aim of achieving social and economic inclusion through the promotion of high-quality jobs in the independent sector. The article concludes that, in order to achieve the sector’s potential to recruit from the long-term unemployed, local authorities must approach their enabling role from the emerging EU policy perspective of Community Economic Development (CED) (European Commission, 1996a). Specifically, by employing ‘the community’ as the platform for service delivery, the problems of matching labour demand and supply in the sector could more effectively be addressed. Although immediately relevant in the UK context, these arguments have important implications for the development of home care as an employment field across the EU in general.