The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on 2024 Workforce Data.

This is the 17th workforce data report published by the SSSC and the 14th set of Official Statistics. The report combines administrative data from the Care Inspectorate with data collected by the SSSC directly from local authorities to form a comprehensive picture of the paid workforce employed in the social service sector in Scotland at the end of 2024. 

Download (PDF, 1.9MB) 

Revision note 07 October 2025: There was an error in the version of this report published on 30 September 2025 in Table 34. The Public Staff Headcount and Total Staff Headcount was undercounted by 50.  This error was not present in the data tables (xlsx, csv and ods).  The report was corrected and republished on 07 October 2025.

This report provides and overview of the data at a national level and divided by sub-sector or local authority area.  The format of the report mainly follows the SSSC's previous workforce data reports for 2008-2023.

Key points

• The Scottish social service workforce increased to its highest level yet (214,750) in 2024.  Largely driven by an increase in staff working in privately run care homes for adults (+1,800 since 2023).
• The care homes for adults workforce is getting bigger.  Their workforce increased in 2024 to 52,400, while the number of services decreased by 24 to 999.
• The day care of children workforce continues to grow, reaching 42,250.  Driven specfically by nurseries and out of school care settings.
• The number of childminding services continues to fall, down to 3,030 active childminders across 2,978 active childminding services.
• The total number of direct care staff increased by 17.4% since 2015, due to growth in two of the largest sub-sectors: housing support/care at home and day care of children.
• The WTE number of staff is 163,790 and the actual number of staff is 214,750 resulting in a ratio of 0.76 which means that on average each employee works 76% of whole-time hours.
• At 41% the private sector continues to have the largest share of the sector's workforce.
• Decreases in public and voluntary housing support/care at home staff is counterbalanced by an increase in the private sector headcount so that housing support/care at home continues to be the largest employer of social care staff, accounting for 36% of the total workforce.
• In 2024, 83% of the sector were employed on permanent contracts and 5% had a no guaranteed hours contract, consistent with 2015 and 2023.
• Just over half of the workforce (54%) is employed full time, though this varies from 11% to 80% by sub-sector.

As an Official Statistics product, this publication complies with the Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008. The list of people who have pre-release access can be found in this spreadsheet: PRA list.

The tables and charts in this report are available in Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) format, plus all the report's data tables in non-proprietary Comma Separated Values (CSV) format. The CSV files are provided together in a compressed ZIP file. The provision of the data in these formats is intended to facilitate its analysis and re-use.

Also available for download is the blank survey template used by local authority social work survey respondents to submit their data for December 2024.

More detailed tables giving a breakdown of the number of people working in all sub-sectors and employer types within individual local authority areas will be published in our detailed data section in the coming months.

Read more

The Scottish Social Services Council publishes information on those undertaking qualifications relevant to work in the social service sector. This data is to help support workforce planning.

There are two main SVQ frameworks that are relevant to people working in care services. One is Social Services and Healthcare which is aimed primarily at those working in adult social care services. The other is Children and Young People which is aimed mainly at those working in day care for children and residential child care services. All of the SVQs are benchmark qualifications for workforce registration.

The tables published below present SVQ provision data separately for the two frameworks and cover the period 2016 to 2025. Data on the numbers of modern apprenticeships (MAs) within each framework is also provided including the proportion of SVQ activity made up by MAs.

In addition data is also available on relevant HNC provision. The two HNCs that are most relevant are, the HNC Childhood Practice and the HNC Social Services. As with the SVQs, both of these are benchmark qualifications for registration.

These tables give a breakdown of the entries (registrations) and awards (certifications) for SVQs, MAs and HNCs. The data used in the tables is provided by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) with the exception of the MA data.

The SSSC is responsible for approving MA centres and dealing with all registrations and certifications in the two relevant frameworks. The data for this is held on the MA Online system, which is managed on our behalf by the Federation for Industry Sector Skills & Standards (FISSS).

The data tables and charts in this report are available in Microsoft Excel (.xls x) and OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods) format. The provision of the data in these formats is intended to facilitate its analysis and re-use.

For more detailed information on modern apprenticeships please see this page.

If you have any enquiries about these tables, please contact:

Zara Gall
Tel: 01382 723657
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Read more

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published the Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2024. 

The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2024 presents information on: 

The number of practising MHOs in post at 2nd December 2024, excluding long-term absentees.

MHO trainees, leavers, vacancies and staffing shortfalls.

Key characteristics of the MHO workforce (e.g. age) and the type of teams they work in.

The key points from this year’s MHO report are set out below.

• There were 765 active MHO posts in 2024, which is 36 more than the 729 in 2023. This is the highest number since records began in 2005.
• The number of individuals (headcount) working as an MHO rose from 697 in 2023 to 729 in 2024.
  
• The overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week in 2024 was 13,880 the highest since 2016 when we started reporting this figure, the previous highest was in 2023 when it was 13,149.
• Since December 2020 there has been a rise of 19.5 percent of the hours worked by MHOs.
• Between 2023 and 2024 there was a rise of 731 hours (5.6%) in the overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week.
• Active exclusive MHO posts rose by 27 (9%), cover posts by 6 (10.3%), and non-exclusive posts by 3 (0.8%).
• Reported shortfall decreased by 497 hours per week (17.1%) from 2,914 to 2,417 hours per week.
• Between December 2023 and December 2024, 76 staff left 78 MHO posts.

 Download (PDF,1.25MB) 

As a National Statistics product, this publication complies with The Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics (Scotland) Order 2008. The list of people who were given pre-release access can be found here.

Tables from The Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2023

Time Series

The  Mental Health Officer time series data section of the data website can be found here. This will be updated in September 2025 with the 2024 MHO data. This means the latest data can be viewed as part of the full time series data, some of which goes back to 2005.

If you have any enquiries about this report or any of the associated tables, please contact:

Zara Gall
Tel: 01382 723657
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Read more

SSSC Fitness to Practise Data Snapshot Report 2024/25 

This report is a snapshot of our fitness to practise information from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 and, in most cases, we’ve included previous years for comparison. This is our second fitness to practise report which we will publish annually to build a long-term picture. 

The report shows that the majority of the 175,672 people on our Register practise safely, effectively and are doing a great job. We only need to investigate a minority of people. On average, 1.03% of registered workers are investigated each year and in 2024/25 there were 139 decisions made to remove people from the Register. 

Read more

Analysis of the data as at 6^th December 2024

This report presents data on the whole time equivalent (WTE) number of social workers and social work vacancies in local authority social work services in December 2024. It is the fourth of our half-yearly reports on practising social workers (that is, main grade social workers and senior social workers). The last report was published in November last year with data from June 2024. That report can be downloaded from

Read more

These tables look in detail at the adults' services workforce in Scotland. They supplement data already published in the Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on 2023 Workforce Data.

Read more