Question reference: S6W-13366
- Asked by: Emma Harper, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 19 December 2022
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Current status: Initiated by the Scottish Government. Answered by Humza Yousaf on 20 December 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made in developing health and social care workforce demand projections, in line with the National Workforce Strategy published in March 2022.
Answer
Extensive work has already taken place to develop projections for the health and social care workforce, including engagement with stakeholders to understand different user needs, and actively including these in the specification for the Projections.
Early conclusions from the developing projections model indicate:
- Further workforce growth, from current record staffing levels in Health and Social Care, will be required between now and 2030, across the health and social care workforce, to successfully respond to known demographic trends within Scotland’s population.
- The relationship between service demand and workforce demand is heavily influenced by other factors including the development of new roles and the reform of existing job roles, alongside evolutions in service models, investment in technology and, artificial intelligence and new skills.
Projected workforce demand in the short-medium term will continue to be managed through a portfolio approach to operational workforce planning, in accordance with the framework set out in the National Health and Social Care Workforce Strategy.
Through this approach we continue to invest, at historically high levels, in the education and training of pre-registration healthcare professionals, continue to invest in widening access, apprenticeships, role diversification and role reform, and continue to invest in ethical and proportionate international recruitment of qualified health and care staff, to supplement domestic supply routes, in line with projected needs.
We aim to set out high level conclusions from projections in the coming months. Clearly, these projections are iterative and will respond to and change depending on emerging evidence and data.