Maree Allison, SSSC Chief Executive said:
‘This has been a year of change and delivery as we continually improve our services, increasing our efficiency and value for the people who work in social work, social care and children and young people services and the individuals who use their vital services.
‘It was a busy year as we prepared to complete our Future Proofing Programme, an ambitious change project designed to make being registered easier and more straightforward which went live in June 2024.
‘We reviewed and revised our approach to qualifications and continuous professional learning in collaboration with key stakeholders and our registrants, involving people in all aspects of the programme. And we reviewed our Codes of Practice for Social Service Workers and Employers to reflect changes in practice and the way services are delivered.
‘Alongside this, we developed more free learning resources, supporting more registrants.
‘And this year we released more data on the registered workforce, helping to promote better understanding of this sector, supporting workforce planning and improving service delivery. We have released two new reports, one on key registration information about the workforce and one on fitness to practise data and detailed insight into our public protection role.
‘I’m looking forward to the year ahead when we will see delivery of significant improvements from the Future Proofing Programme and the benefits and positive impacts these improvements will have for the sector.
‘We will continue to work hard to deliver excellent public service and value to our registrants and give the people of Scotland confidence in those who care for them when they are most in need.’
Highlights from our 2023-24 Annual Report.
- The number of people on our Register grew by 7,961 from its peak of 168,304 in 2022/23 to a high of 176,265 in 2023/24.
- Our registrant and stakeholder surveys received over 8,500 responses and indicated a continued positive feeling towards the SSSC. The results were increasingly positive with the benefits of being registered increasing from 62% to 72% and satisfaction with our customer service up from 80% to 83%.
- We awarded over 4,700 Open badges and an average 4,695 users were active on the MyLearning app per month.
- We received 3,959 fitness to practise concerns in 2023/24 and closed or resolved 3,998. We held 145 hearings.
- Our Future Proofing Programme, a major change project, entered its second year. We carried out significant consultation during 2023/24 engaging with and involving people from across the sector to give us feedback and help design the new structure for the Register, our continuous professional learning requirements and our new Codes of Practice for Workers and Employers.
- In our role as a national and official statistics provider we continue to publish a range of reports and data sets to support workforce planning. This year we published the Movement of Day Care of Children Staff Report 2023 and one on intelligence from our first six-monthly survey of social worker filled posts and vacancies which focuses on practising social workers. We also published two new data snapshot reports on our data website, the Scottish Social Services Council Register snapshot report and the SSSC Data Snapshot Report – Fitness to Practise.