This year’s theme is ‘Strengthening Intergenerational Solidarity for Enduring Wellbeing’, which emphasises the importance of caring and respecting people across generations to build strong societies, protecting the environment and sharing wisdom for a better future.
Laura Lamb, SSSC Director of Workforce and Standards who’s also a registered social worker shares what the SSSC is doing in line with this year’s theme.
‘I am proud to be a social worker and I am proud of the work the SSSC does to support the development of the workforce to achieve better outcomes for people.
‘Social work as a profession is being asked to change to meet the needs of people and communities including tackling socio-economic priorities such as poverty including cost of living, housing and homelessness, the reform of adult social care and Keeping the Promise for Scotland’s children and young people.
‘Social workers don’t just work with individuals in isolation they work with them with their families and in communities. To ensure qualifying social workers have the right skills and knowledge to work with individuals of all ages, in Scotland we have purposely retained the generic social work qualification, unlike other countries who have specialised adult and children social work qualifications. The SSSC approves and quality assures the delivery of all social work programmes in Scotland.
‘We produce workforce data, information, intelligence and accredited official statistics reports which support workforce planning at a national level. This helps us understand the current profile of the workforce and any emerging risks. This gives us the information we need to we take forward initiatives to meet social worker demand and retention, such as our Newly Qualified Social Worker Supported Year and our new pathway into social work, the Graduate Apprenticeship for Social Work.
‘To hear directly about people’s experiences of working in social work, social care and children and young people workforce, we have recently carried out our first workforce wellbeing survey. We’ve also introduced sending a leavers survey for people who leave our Register. The findings will help us and other partners consider how best to support the workforce, develop national policies and workforce strategies and to inform national workforce planning.
‘We are also supporting local partnerships, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and employers to identify the needs of local populations and what this means for social work programmes, social work training and practice learning opportunities.’
Workforce data
You can read our data reports, such as the Workforce Data Report, the SSSC Vacancy Report, the Mental Health Officers report and others on the workforce data website.