The SSSC is pleased to announce our publication of provisional Official Statistics on the social service sector’s workforce at 9.30am on Monday 18^th May 2020. 

We have taken the unusual step of publishing data provisionally (in advance of our main publication scheduled for August 2020) in order to support planning for the sector’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is in line with advice from Scottish Government to Official Statistics producers to consider ways in which they can support planning. It is also in light of the increased demand we have experienced for data that we hold on those working in the sector. In deciding this and developing the data sets we took advice from the Office of the Chief Statistician in Scottish Government and from key stakeholders in the sector. If we had not taken this step then the data would not be available until after the publication of the main report (the Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on Workforce Data) in August 2020.

The information contained within the provisional data sets presents data on the number of staff within registered care services by their location. In the case of local authority social work staff this is presented by local authority area and by the type of team they work in. Data on childminders is presented simply at the level of the local authority. 

The data is published here.