This report is the first of its kind produced by the SSSC. It provides an examination of trends within residential child care from 2010 to 2020 looking at changes not just in the workforce but also in services, providers and children in care

In 2020 we published a plan for putting care experienced children, young people and adults at the heart of what we do in 2020-2023. Part of that strategy included a commitment to ‘…develop a report examining the last 10 years of residential child care workforce data’. This report draws on workforce data held by the SSSC for the period 2010 to 2020 and also makes use of data on the numbers of residential child care services and the numbers of looked after children from data collected by the Care Inspectorate and Scottish Government. This report is the first of its kind produced by the SSSC. It provides an examination of trends within residential child care from 2010 to 2020 looking at changes not just in the workforce but also in services, providers and children in care.

Read more

This file allows you to interactively investigate data on practising social workers employed by local authorities. It uses data from our LA Post Types publication and adds in some contextual population data from National Records of Scotland. Guidance and background notes are included within the file.

Read more

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

This report is based on data from 31 December 2020. As with previous reports, 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 care services. It also includes data on vacancies as a percentage of the total whole time equivalent (WTE) workforce.

Read more

This spreadsheet contains information about the Social Services Workforce collected from services regulated by the Care Inspectorate (via its Annual Returns in December) and from the annual December Local Authority Social Work Services Staffing Return in 2020.

Read more

The Workforce Skills Report 2021 looks at the current provision of qualifications for the social work, social care and early years workforce, demand for qualifications and how they meet current skills needs. It also looks at barriers to undertaking qualifications and what new skills are needed for the future.

All workers registered with the SSSC must hold, or be working towards, a qualification suitable for their role. If they don’t already hold one, they are registered with a condition to gain it, usually within five years.

The new report highlights that between 2021 and 2025 more than 68,000 registered workers in care homes for adults, care at home and housing support services need to meet a qualification condition. Most of these are met by the SVQ Social Services and Healthcare (SSH) at SCQF level 6, however based on recent average provision around 25,000 people will be able to start the award over the next four years. This gap between demand and supply is the biggest identified in the report

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 2020 Workforce Data.

Read more