On Twitter, @Wrestwood of St.Mary's School and College, Bexhill, asks: "Is this a pointer of things to come in a consolidating world?" and without further comment provides a link to a news story from GI Partners, a private equity company, about their acquisition of Advanced Childcare.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, March 18, 2011 – GI Partners (“GI”), a leading private equity firm focused on investments in asset-intensive businesses and real estate platforms, is pleased to announce the £28 million acquisition of Advanced Childcare (“ACL”).
We learn that:
Based in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and employing over 350 people, ACL is a leading provider of outsourced children’s care and education services in the U.K.
And that:
ACL is the latest addition to GI’s growing portfolio of specialist care and education companies. GI intends to use ACL as a platform to create a multi-regional, industry-leading childcare services business leveraging its significant experience in the healthcare industry to date. GI already owns The Cambian Group, which it has built up through proactive management and selective acquisitions to become the U.K.’s largest provider of specialist services in education, mental health rehabilitation and learning disabilities.
And, as Alfred Foglio, Managing Director of GI Partners, says:
“More often than not, local government authorities are choosing to close down older or inadequately-rated facilities and use a competitive tendering process to select proven providers who are willing to invest in new buildings and high-quality care models.
Some questions immediately spring to mind - "just asking":
What sort of public services delivery model is it that sees private equity companies taking over "specialist [children's] services in education, mental health rehabilitation and learning disabilities"?
What sort of public services delivery model is it that sees an increasingly reducing number of very large and ever growing companies, through acquisition and consolidation, dominating services - rather than, say, smaller, more local and, dare I say it, specialist third sector organisations (charities, social enterprises, co-operatives) which would, on the surface at least, appear more in line with the Government's 'localism' policy?
What specialist training does this public services delivery model generate? In the UK, our teacher training model provides little or no disability-specific training before trainees enter the classroom as qualified teachers. As a service-user, the same seems to me to be true of the domiciliary care services.
What will they know of conductive education and children with cerebral palsy?
These are honest questions. I do not start from a political position that holds that certain public services can and should only be provided (and assessed and funded) by the State, centrally or locally, with no role for other providers. Nevertheless, if it is difficult enough, as it is, to introduce innovation and change in the context of a local authority-dominated public services model, how will questions such as these even get a hearing, never mind an answer, if this story is a pointer of things to come? How then should those of us in conductive education respond?
As a small footnote to this, two instances - straws in what same wind? - the squeezing out over the past 10 years and more of small and local community sector providers of what used to be called adult and continuing learning, in favour of larger, mainly private sector providers; and the concern expressed on social networks that the new application process for bringing forward proposals for Free Schools could tend to disadvantage the very parent-led groups that the Free Schools policy is intended to encourage.
The role of specialist, local, and especially third sector providers - particularly those innovating new practices - needs specifically to be legislated for.