The Regulation of Care Act is about quality assurance. It is designed to reassure the public about standards of service, especially in two rapidly expanding sectors - care of the elderly and provision for young children. It is designed to introduce national standards and a national mechanism for ensuring compliance.
A national framework for regulation achieves a separation of the standard-setting and inspection functions from the public sector service providers in the form of local authorities and establishes a clear divide between the quality assurance and service provider roles. It also serves to put local authority provision on a more equal basis to that of private and voluntary sector providers. The same standards will presumably apply to all, and everyone will be evaluated by the same agency.
This has the merit of removing a source of grievance in those local authorities where relationships between the public and private sectors are poor. Over time, it may also serve to change the attitude of local authorities towards their own provision. This is accorded a special status that may help to reinforce the natural tendency towards provider capture. If, however, competition is to take place on a more equal basis, defence of the in-house service may become less automatic.
A more important dimension on which the Act is likely to be judged is whether or not it assists in the development of more joined-up and user-friendly services. There is an urgent need to develop a more customer-focused approach to provision. Children from families who require full or extended-day care are passed like parcels from agency to agency. A young child could easily come into contact with more providers between the ages of three and five than she will in the following 20 years. It would be surprising if some were not left bewildered and disorientated by the experience.
* This is a shortened version of an article in Children in Scotland's July 2001 magazine.