NHS Education for Scotland
A skilled and sustainable workforce for a healthier Scotland
NHS Education for Scotland
A skilled and sustainable workforce for a healthier Scotland
Background
The Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) and NHS Education for Scotland (NES) are working with other partners to deliver an online tool to support career development for the adult and children’s social care workforce.
Social care is a hugely diverse sector, with varied and flexible roles and the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of others as well as to gain 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 currently available is hard to navigate and doesn’t fully describe all there is to offer.
This tool will describe the wide range of roles and careers and highlight those that are the best match for an individual’s skills, experience and interests. Its aim is to support more people to join and to stay in the social care sector.
The impact
The new website will give users access to information about up to 100 different jobs across adult and children’s social care, describing the role and what skills and experience are needed. It will also give users information about how they can progress and / or specialise in their career.
Progress
We have been working on capturing the broad range of job roles across social care and organising them into job families. We have also been researching the entry requirements for each role and what workers will gain by way of professional development.
While doing this, we have been developing the website itself which will provide an easy way for workers to navigate around the social care job world and we now have a draft of what that will look like. We are exploring additional ways of presenting that information using new technologies like automation and artificial intelligence.
What’s next?
We are finalising the job families and the digital solution and in October we hope to start building the final product so that we can begin testing it.
We will provide regular updates on the progress of the work here. If you have any questions, you can contact john.eden@nhs.net.
Last updated: Thursday, October 10, 2024