The plan sets out how Scotland’s health and social care services will grow to meet demand and make sure there are enough staff with the right skills to provide these services.
We were involved in developing the plan and will be working in partnership with other organisations to deliver the key social service commitments in it. These commitments include:
- supporting the shift in balance of care into community settings, by delivering more care at home and reducing rates of admission to acute hospital services
- supporting additional Mental Health Officer (MHO) capacity in local authorities by providing funding to help address the current shortfall in capacity of 55 whole time equivalent MHOs by 2022-23
- carrying out modelling work to assess the impact of reforms to adults with incapacity requirements, particularly around guardianship applications on mental health services workload and demand for MHOs
- providing informal and formal skills development for workforce planners across health and social care employers
- designing and overseeing work to obtain a national picture of workforce planning capacity, methodology and capability in local authorities and health and social care partnerships for planning social care services to consider how best to support effective collaborative and strategic workforce planning
- Scottish Government and COSLA working with the Scottish university and college sectors to examine, develop and build a workforce planning educational qualification over the next 12 months to build a strategic approach to developing workforce planning education and skills for the health and social care workforce
- providing additional support in 2019/21 to the third and independent social care sectors to enable their contributions to the developments in workforce planning to be supported through this workforce plan.
Welcoming the Health and social care: integrated workforce plan, SSSC Director of Development and Innovation Phillip Gillespie said:
‘This plan will lead to more sustainable health and social care services by setting out the future workforce requirements to meet growing demand.
‘We have responsibility to deliver important commitments in the plan, particularly in relation to MHO provision and workforce planning.
‘We’re looking forward to working with Scottish Government, COSLA and others to support the social service workforce to further develop their skills, knowledge and confidence to work in integrated settings.’