Care as a Public Good: Stopping the Drain on Local Communities

Care in the UK is at a breaking point. With 70% of local authority budgets consumed by care services, rising costs, and profits flowing to private equity and tax havens, the system is failing the people it’s meant to serve. New research from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, Centre for Thriving Places, Cooperatives UK and the New Economics Foundation reveals that in just three regions, private care providers extracted £256 million in profit over three years, while care workers, disproportionately women and those from global majority backgrounds are often paid below the Real Living Wage.In this episode, Matt Masters speaks with Rosie Maguire, Policy and Programme Manager at the Centre for Thriving Places. Rosie has spent the last 15 years helping organisations use evidence to shape strategy, research, and learning. She works with civil society and the public sector to identify goals, priorities, and how insights can inform better decisions. Together, they explore why care has become a commodity, how this extraction undermines communities, and what a fair, community-focused alternative looks like.