The good folks fighting the ills of dementia in the UK are intrigued by SIBs today (just in time for a great video from Tracy Palandjian discussing claiming assets to create a social bank). Back to the dementia angst – on all fronts we appreciate their angst but at the same time they clearly keep the results in mind. Government can only do so much (and it has spent more than it can readily manage going forward), thus we need the citizens engaged via methods such as SIBs to create a better future for us all.
Could The “Social Impact Bond” Help To Improve Services In Dementia Care?
livingwelldementia.org
It’s pretty often that you hear of social care being “on its knees”, due to drastic chronic underfunding. A concern about attracting investment from the private sector is that this will help to accelerate the lack of financial resource allocation from the State. And yet this is the opposite to the argument of resources ‘leeching’ out of the public sector into the private sector.
In terms of the ‘business model’, there are concerns that, to maximise shareholder dividend, staff will not be incentivised to ‘care well’, if they are barely meeting the requirements of the national minimum wage. Whilst the employer emphasises ‘flexibility’ of zero hours contracts, for many such contracts are symbolic of a lack of commitment for sustained employment by the employer.
So the idea of bonds being used to prop up dementia care, currently one of the three big arms of the Prime Minister’s Dementia Challenge, has gained some momentum, for example here. Bonds are effectively “IOUs“, and concerns remain for them as in the private finance initiative – such as who actually benefits, the prolonged threat of penalty for not being able to meet your loan repayments, the issue of who decides the outcomes by which performance will be assessed, and who actually manages or controls the enterprise.
Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) are depicted as “a way of enabling innovation, creating flexible contracts around social outcomes and providing linked investment“. But for some, they are a vehicle for enabling ‘privatisation by stealth’.
Tracy Palandjian (Social Finance): Using Unclaimed Assets To Create A “Social Bank” (Video)
Frequency.com