New tool to support careers in social care

Why have we created the Social Care Career Options tool?

Background

Social care is a hugely diverse sector that gives workers the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of other. Roles can be varied and flexible and can support to workers to develop a range of skills and qualifications. The social service workforce makes up 7.8% of all Scottish employment and there is a role suited for almost everyone.

However, evidence suggests that whether you already work in social care or are looking to join, the information previously available was hard to navigate and didn't fully describe all there is to offer. Many people are unaware of the diversity of roles in the sector, or don’t know that they may already have many of the skills required to excel in these roles.

Solution

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) Social Care & Communities Directorate and the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) worked together with partners from the sector to deliver an online tool to address these issues.

The aim of this tool is to support more people to join and stay in the social care sector.

The tool features dedicated pages for over 70 roles across adult and children’s social care in Scotland. It also features stories and testimonials from those already in the sector in order to showcase the positive impact that these roles can have on workers’ lives, and the lives of others.

What work has been done?

Over the past year, we’ve been working on capturing the broad range of job roles across social care and organising them into job families. We also researched the entry requirements and job descriptions for each role and what workers will gain by way of professional development.

We also worked on the technical development of the tool, which involved designing an easy-to-navigate website that is optimised for mobile use. We’ve explored many ways of presenting information using new technologies to ensure that the tool is accessible, engaging and useful.

The Social Care Careers Options Tool launched successfully on the 30^th of April 2025, and is now freely accessible for anyone to use.

You can find and explore the tool at Social Care Career Options Tool

What’s next?

Now that the tool is live, we are working on improving and expanding the tool so that it remains current for our users.

We will continue to add additional job roles to the existing 70+ roles on the site, and we are also gathering additional testimonials from social care staff who want to share more about their careers in the sector.

We have also begun testing an AI chatbot feature and we will provide regular updates on when this will be available. This will allow users to ask personalised questions about careers in social care and receive live, tailored answers.

If you would like to hear more about this project, please get in touch with us at nes.socialcare@nhs.scot

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