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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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

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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.

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SSSC Leaver Survey Report 2025 

The SSSC Register Leavers Survey Report gives an insight into leavers from the social work, social care and children and young people workforce.

It examines who is leaving the SSSC Register, why and where they are moving to. Real time data is now available on the Registration data Registration Dashboard

This report is based on data from 2,003 people who left the Register between August and December 2024. There was a clear relationship between age group and likelihood to respond to the survey, with older workers generally being more likely to respond than younger ones. We saw a similar pattern with the length of time that the leaver had been on the Register. Retirement, health and poor terms and conditions are the top reasons given for people leaving the Register.

This is the first collection of this data so the findings are preliminary until we have more to work with but we believe it is useful to publish the findings so far.

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For any queries about this report then please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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