Nearly half of all care services reporting vacancies

Responding to a new report published by the Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Social Services Council which shows that nearly half (49%) of all care services in Scotland reported having vacancies at the end of 2022, the highest level since publication of figures began in 2017, Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

"Care services are stretched to breaking point. More and more demands on the service are simply not being met because the staff are simply not there.

"The Scottish Government's solution is a doomed top-down takeover of services that will take away local control over services. We would invest that money in pay and conditions instead.

“With an ageing population, we should be encouraging more people to consider social care as a career of choice, not wasting money on a billion-pound bureaucracy.”