Are there reasons to be worried about the 'caretelization' of residential care?

Successive governments have encouraged both the marketization and the privatization of the residential and nursing care sector. This paper describes how the large corporate providers continue to increase their share of the market through a continual process of mergers, takeovers and acquisitions. Market analysis suggests that this trend is set to continue. The name given to this phenomenon in this paper is `caretelization'. The process of caretelization is examined in the context of New Labour's public sector modernization agenda. The paper raises questions of whether continued caretelization is more or less likely to help New Labour achieve certain aims of modernization. For example, New Labour often talks of `putting people themselves in the driving seat of the public services'. It is argued that, with caretelization, not only is public accountability diminished, but key principles such as consumer choice and user involvement are likely to be compromised by allowing ownership of residential and nursing care to be dictated by market forces. Such developments raise questions about both New Labour's desire and its capability to manage the forces of neo-liberalism.