Demand for private social care - help with cleaning, medication, bathing and shopping and other support - is rising rapidly as cash-strapped councils restrict help provided to the elderly and disabled, says a report published yesterday.

However, the quality of private provision is patchy. People who pay for care face a "cottage industry" of providers, many of them small and inexperienced, paying low wages to poorly-qualified employees and with high rates of staff turnover, according to the government's independent social care inspector.