New adults' social services data report published

31st December 2018

The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published the Adults' Services Workforce 2017 report, taking a detailed look at the adults' services workforce, which makes up 71% of the total social service workforce.

The data in the report supplements the information published in August in the SSSC's Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on 2017 Workforce Data. It is our second such report and we plan to continue publishing it annually.

Welcoming the report SSSC Chief Executive Lorraine Gray said:

‘As the biggest proportion of the social service workforce, adults’ services are extremely important and contribute £3.4bn to the Scottish economy each year.

‘This detailed data report will help employers, and others, in their workforce planning activities so we continue to have the workforce we need with the right skills, knowledge and values to care for an ageing population with more complex needs in future.’

A new feature in this year’s report is the workforce headcount and number of active services as a percentage of Scottish social services compared to the 2008 and 2016 figures. This shows there is little change in the adults’ services share of both social services and workforce; 29% and 71% respectively.

Key points

· The size of the workforce in adults’ services has increased to 143,600, a rise of 1,190 since 2016.

· 43% of the adults’ services workforce work for private employers, followed by 31% voluntary and 26% public. However this split is not constant across sub-sectors.

· The voluntary sector is the largest employer type in the housing support/care at home sub-sector at nearly 46% yet the private sector dominates the care homes for adults sub-sector at 71%.

· Care homes for adults and housing support/care at home employ by far the majority of staff with 123,370 staff between them (86%).

As well as looking at adults’ services as a whole, the report looks more closely at the two largest sub-sectors: care homes for adults and housing support/care at home.

This report has two parts.

· An overview of the headcount, numbers of services, median number of staff and employer type for all adults’ services’ sub-sectors.

· Median hours, age, gender, part time/full time, job function and contract type for the workforce in care homes for adults and housing support/care at home services.

The report combines administrative data from the Care Inspectorate with data collected by the SSSC directly from local authorities to form a comprehensive picture of the paid workforce employed in the adults’ services sector in Scotland at the end of 2017. The SSSC is an official statistics provider.

The Economic Value of the Adult Social Care Sector - Scotland report (Skills for Care and Development, June 2018) http://www.sssc.uk.com/about-the-sssc/multimedia-library/publications/209-research/the-economic-value-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-scotland