The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) today published the Mental Health Officers (Scotland) Report 2022 today. In this, the eleventh annual report, we provide key data of the mental health officer (MHO) landscape in Scotland.
The report shows an increase in filled exclusive and non-exclusive MHO posts and a 7% increase in the average weekly number of hours worked on the previous year. There are more hours being spent on MHO duties, the highest since 2016.
SSSC Acting Chief Executive, Maree Allison said:
‘It’s encouraging to see that the shortfall in the number of MHO hours has decreased. However, our data shows that there is still a significant shortfall of over 2,600 hours each week.’
‘This report, produced by our Workforce Intelligence Team by analysing data collected directly from local authorities, will help the Scottish Government, local authorities and others in future workforce planning, including succession planning requirements.’
Key points from this year’s MHO report
- There were 707 filled MHO posts in 2022, 13 more than in 2021.
- The number of people working as an MHO rose from 660 in 2021 to 670 in 2022.
- The overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week in 2022 was 12,752 the highest since 2016 when we started reporting this figure, the next highest was in 2016 when it was 12,388.
- Between 2021 and 2022 there was a rise of over 9% in the overall hours estimated to be spent on MHO duties each week.
- There was a rise of over 7% in the weekly average hours worked per MHO post.
- Filled exclusive MHO posts rose by 32 (13.7%) whereas the filled cover MHO posts fell by 21 (31.8%) and there was a rise of 24 non-exclusive posts (5.7%).
- Reported shortfall decreased by 8.2% from 2,840 to 2,606 hours per week.
- Between December 2021 and December 2022, 92 staff left 95 MHO posts.
- There is a long-term trend which has been seen since records began in 2005 of increasing proportions of MHOs located in mental health teams and reducing proportions in non-mental health teams. Two-thirds of MHOs are now based in mental health teams compared to roughly two-fifths in 2005.
Our role supporting MHOs
We support the education and training of social workers to become mental health officers through setting professional standards and competencies. We also monitor and quality assure the Mental Health Officer Award programmes which are approved by us and delivered by universities.
Download the 2022 Mental Health Officers Report here.
You can find more reports on our Workforce Data website.