In January 2020 the Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) published new figures on the levels of staff vacancies in Scotland’s social care services.

As with the previous report, this report provides a national overview of vacancies and recruitment difficulties reported by care services to the Care Inspectorate, the body which registers and inspects all social care services. It also includes data on vacancies as a percentage of whole time equivalent (WTE) as a proportion of total WTE workforce held by the SSSC.

At 31st December 2018, 38% of services reported having vacancies. This was unchanged from the proportion of services with vacancies at 31st December 2017 and in increase of 2 percentage points from 2016 (36%).

Housing support services (63% of services), care at home services (60% of services), care homes for older people (59% of services) and care homes for adults (52% of services) were the main service types with the largest proportion of services reporting vacancies all significantly above the national average.

Daycare of children services (23%) remained the only main service type where the vacancy rates were significantly below the national average.

At 31 December 2018, the rate of whole time equivalent (WTE) vacancies for all services in Scotland was 5.5% down from 5.9% in 2017. This was higher than the overall vacancy rate across all establishments in Scotland of 3.1%.

The information in the report on vacancies, problems filling vacancies and the reasons why services have reported having problems filling vacancies, has been extracted from information provided by care services, across early learning and childcare, children’s services and adult social care.

Every care service is asked to complete an annual return each year to provide statistical and other information. The vacancy questions are asked for every care service type apart from childminders, who are typically sole providers.

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