This Staff vacancies in care services 2024 report is jointly published by the Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC). This report provides data on vacancies reported by care services as at 31 December 2024. It presents data on the number of registered care services with a vacancy, the number of actual vacancies that services say they had using whole time equivalent (WTE) data, and data on the reasons why services have reported that vacancies are hard to fill.

The report shows that at 31 December 2024,

• 44% of registered care services reported having staff vacancies.
• In 9 of the 32 local authority areas, 50% or more services reported vacancies.
• Housing support services, care at home services,  care homes for older people and care homes for adults faced the most challenge in filling vacancies.

The most common reasons for vacancies not being filled are too few applicants with experience, too few applicants, and too few qualified applicants.

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