This page provides information on the numbers of people registered with the SSSC.

• Background
• Current snapshot
• Downloads
• Early Learning and Childcare

Background

One of the SSSC’s statutory duties is to keep a Register of social service workers, social workers and social work students in Scotland. Registration began in 2003 with social workers and has gradually been rolled out across the sector so that it now covers the majority of those working in care services. There are over 20 separate categories on the register and there are over 164,000 individuals registered. In most cases, people are registered according to the job they are doing (e.g. manager of a residential child care service).

Registration is for staff who work directly with people who use social services. Nurses, teachers and other professional groups working in a registered care or social work service are not required to register with the SSSC if they have a current registration with their own professional body. There are thought to be approximately 10,000 such staff working in the sector (or 5% of the total workforce). In addition staff working in ancillary or auxiliary roles (e.g. business support, cleaning, IT etc.) do not register.

This means that the coverage of the sector’s workforce is slightly smaller than in the annual workforce data report. However, unlike the workforce data gathered by the SSSC, which is a snapshot collected each December, registration data is updated daily by registrants and SSSC staff to reflect each registrant’s current circumstances.

Registration is qualification-based, however, in most categories individuals can register before achieving the necessary award. In these cases, they are given a qualification condition which means that they must achieve the qualification within a specified period (usually five years). The information available from this page will provide quarterly snapshots from March 2019 onwards, of the number of people registered with the SSSC by their category of registration. It will also indicate how many of the registrants have a qualification condition.

The process of rolling out registration to the whole of the social service sector finished in September 2020. In most cases staff working in care services are required to be registered with the SSSC (or another regulatory body for example the Nursing and Midwifery Council) in order to be employed in a care service. Details of when registration became compulsory for registration categories is provided along with the data. 

Current snapshot

The data in this table is a snapshot accurate to 27th  September 2021.

Please note that an individual may appear on more than one part of the register. The total number of unique individuals is 164,110 (27th September 2021).

It is notable that the number of registrants has decreased since March 2021. In March 2020, in response to the Covid pandemic, we stopped removing people from the Register (who failed to pay fees or renew their registration).  This process was re-established in March 2021, resulting in approximately 10,000 removals.  New applications must be completed to return to the Register, resulting in a drop of active registrants. 

(The next snapshot will be published at the beginning of January 2022.)

Downloads

You can download the current and past register snapshots in either Microsoft Excel (XSLX), Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) or comma-separated values (CSV) format here. The CSV formats are designed for machine-readability and omit the number of services in the register parts, the date of required registration and condition percentage but add fields for level (manager, etc) and subsector (adult day care, etc). A time series compliation of all CSV snapshots is included for convenience.   

 Early Learning and Childcare

In addition to the overall registration data published above. We have also been asked to provide more detailed data on the Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) workforce to support the expansion of early learning and childcare services in 2020. The ELC workforce are a subset of the Day Care of Children (DCC) workforce and provide publicly funded services to pre-school children. The latest data was extracted from the SSSC Register on 27th September 2021. The next data set will be available by the early January 2022.

You can download the Early Learning and Childcare detailed data here.