The Scottish Government

« Previous | Contents | Next »

Listen

Section 4 | Sectoral Analysis

4.1 Chapters 4-7 of the report use data from the Pre-Inspection Returns ( PIRs) required by the Care Commission to inform their inspection process. PIRs contain anonymised information on the social services workforce within those services regulated by the Care Commission. ⁸

4.2 The PIR data enables analysis of labour market characteristics at both service and staff levels across all parts of the sector, including voluntary, private and local authority sectors. The analysis focussed on four main service areas, Care Homes for Adults ( CHA), Care Homes for Children and Young People ( CHCYP), Early Education and Childcare ( EECC) and Support Services ( SS). ⁹

4.3 Overall, information on 6,586 services employing a total of 79,888 staff was collected, this accounts for around 95% of the four main service areas. This robust sample means that the PIR data can be used to examine patterns of employment. This chapter will analyse the high level data while subsequent chapters will look at specific aspects of the workforce in more detail, including age, gender, qualifications and the urban-rural make up of the workforce.

4.4 Breaking down the data on services by service type shows that Early Education and Childcare (66.4%) and Care Homes for Adults (22.6%) account for almost 90% of all service units with Care Homes for Children and Young People only representing 2.6% of services.

Table 4-1 Number and percentage of total services

Table 4-2 Number of employees and percentage of total by service

4.5 The prevalence of Care Homes for Adults and Early Education and Childcare is also reflected in the number of staff employed although interestingly the composition differs. Care Homes for Adults account for a proportionately greater number of employees than other service types with 41,290 staff employed, 51.7%. Early Education and Childcare is the second largest employer with 29,162 staff, 36.5%.

4.6 The discrepancy between the proportion of services and the proportion of staff helps to highlight the differences in the size of services between the different types of service. These size differences are likely to be influenced by the needs of the client group being served and subsequently the Care Commission requirements. On average, Early Years and Childcare service providers have fewer staff employed per unit than any of the other three services in the sector. In terms of the average number of staff per unit, Early Education and Childcare employ under 7 staff compared with 11 staff in Support Services, 20 in Care Homes for Children and Young People and 28 in Care Homes for Adults.

4.7 Across the whole sector, the average number of staff employed is slightly over 12 employees per service, which means that the organisations inspected by the Care Commission tend to be classified as Micro (1-10) or Small (11-49) ¹⁰ with only 300 service units employing more than 50 staff. Within this analysis there will be a number of small service delivery units affiliated to a larger organisation, e.g. Barnardos and NCH, which may introduce some downward bias into these figures. The relatively small scale of individual employers in the social services sector could have implications for the ability of the sector as a whole to provide training for employees where individual organisational capacity may be constrained. However, across the whole Scottish economy, 95% of businesses are defined as micro businesses therefore the social services sector is comparable to other sectors in Scotland.

4.8 Disaggregating the service unit information, by local authority, private and voluntary, Table 4-3 shows that local authorities operate the largest number of service units (41.1%). The private and voluntary sectors each account for just over a quarter of the total number of services.

4.9 Analysis of the numbers of staff employed shows that the private sector employs the highest proportion of staff at 45.5%, with the local authority and the voluntary sector employing 31.8% and 20.5% respectively. There is a slight discrepancy between the number of staff in Table 4-4 and that reported in paragraph 3.2. This discrepancy reflects the fact that the Care Commission does not inspect local authority fieldwork staff and therefore do not appear on PIR forms. Were these staff to be included the numbers employed by local authorities would be much closer to the figure reported in paragraph 3.2.

Table 4-3 Number of services and percentage of total by sector

Table 4-4 Number of employees and percentage of total by sector

4.10 Table 4-3 and Table 4-4 show that the private sector employs a proportionately greater number of staff than the number of service units, suggesting that on average, individual private sector service units are larger than those in other parts of the social services sector. By comparing staff by service type and sector as shown in Figure 4.1 this message is reinforced, as the private sector employ more than 60% of staff in Care Homes for Adults which, as identified in paragraph 4.6, tend to have the largest complement of staff per unit.

4.11 Figure 4.1 also highlights the mixed economy that exists in social services, particularly in Early Education and Childcare, and emphasises the importance of the private and voluntary sectors in supporting publicly provided services. While the private sector represents more than 60% of staff in Care Homes for Adults, in contrast it employs less than 10% in Care Homes for Children and Young People and Support Services, where the voluntary sector is a much more prominent partner.

Key Points:

• Early Education and Childcare provides the largest proportion of services, whereas Care Homes for Adults employs the largest number of staff.
• The private sector employs the highest number of staff, whilst the local authority sector operates the highest number of services.
• There is a mixed economy of provision within the aggregate social services sector and within particular services too. For example, in Early Education and Childcare, local authorities employ just over 40% of staff, the private sector around 33% and the voluntary sector employs about 20%.

« Previous | Contents | Next »