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SCOTLAND'S SOCIAL CARE LABOUR MARKET
SUMMARY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. This summary report brings together a picture of key trends in the Scottish social care labour market and is aimed to complement workforce planning in the sector.
2. Social care covers a broad workforce and the structure of the sector varies regionally. 1 The main strands of activity, however, covered by the workforce in this report are children's services, work with offenders, community care, including older people, people with physical disabilities, mental health problems and learning difficulties. Early education and childcare is also included under the broad banner of social care. The skills involved in posts in the sector vary and include demand for specialist qualified staff such as social workers, fieldwork staff, occupational therapists and managers, along with a variety of posts in childminding, domiciliary care, support services and administrative staff.
3. The key points discussed in the report are summarised below.
- Summary Social Care trends:
- Employment in the sector has been growing faster than the average across Scotland. a
- Over last 9 years
- male employment has doubled
- qualification levels have increased
- there has been an increase in proportion of employees with full-time contracts. a
- Labour demand has been increasing faster than supply. b
- The continued decline in numbers of children and increase in those over the retirement age will affect future demand. c
- Future labour demand will, however, also be dependent on intensity of services which are policy-driven. Societal changes and health factors also affect service-user numbers.
- Increasingly local authorities are contracting out services, d but this varies regionally. e At a national level, combined employment in the private and voluntary sectors is now greater than in the public sector. a
- Age profile of the workforce is comparable with the health sector, a though varies between the private, voluntary and public sectors. This may reflect different career paths taken in/out of these sectors. e
Sources
a. Labour Force Survey, ONS (source includes early years and childcare)
b. Staff of Scottish Local Authority Social Work Services, SE (source does not include early years and childcare)
c. Government Actuarial Department population projections
d. Local Government Finance Statistics, SE (source does not include early years and childcare)
e. Care Commission anonymised Pre-Inspection Returns (source includes early years and childcare)
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