Licence to Care – Licensing Terms for For-Profit Residential Care for Children in Four Nordic Countries

Charting the 21st Century Rise of For-Profit Residential Child Care

“…Within such a framework, the literature suggests multiple ways for public authorities to better direct for-profit provision, including the therapeutic content, overall models, and particular treatments in residential childcare-from high-level regulation and guidance to local, municipal-level specification of procurement criteria and performancebased contracts [79,80]. State licensing-a key instrument of controlling for-profit care providers-varies greatly between countries-in terms of licensing models, as well as the extent of intervention post-license [81]. The potential of state licensing may often remain underutilized-for example, where it does not focus on major aspects of provision, such as staffing levels, a child's contacts with their biological family, schooling, and health support-and thus may currently be a missed opportunity to ensure the quality of care [82].…”

The Fate of Social Modernity

“…However, there has been a period (mainly the first half of the 2010s) during which services were also contracted out to private businesses. Those sections of the child protection system that are based on a formalised procurement process predominantly comprise providers of residential care services which receive a special license from regional authorities (Pålsson et al 2022). The institutional set-up of the child protection system is endorsed by well-organised interest groups, including those anchored in the non-profit sector (Segaard 2023).…”

“…Overall, this movement towards 'marketisation' undergirds (new) hybrid organisational designs in the field of welfare provision broadly speaking (Billis and Rochester 2020). Concerning for-profit welfare provision, which has expanded worldwide in scope and ambition since the 1990s (Pieper 2018;Pålsson et al 2022), the complexity inherent in the relationship between ownership and stewardship is even more apparent, as commercial organisations are subject to the same frameworks as their non-commercial counterparts but often pursue a specific economic agenda. Hybridity is an issue here as well, given that rent-seeking, being a fundamental motivational source in the governance of commercial organisations, must be attuned to both (non-economic) content goals imposed from outside and professional norms which are intrinsic to organised welfare provision and tend to influence many employees in Western European welfare sectors.…”