Do you want to help and support people with their physical and mental wellbeing? Do you want to make a difference to the lives of people who are experiencing social and emotional problems? If you love working with people and are caring, calm and patient, then you might find working in the social, caring and advisory area a rewarding career.
You could be working in advisory services, childcare and education, community education, psychology and counselling, social work or social care. You might specialise in working with adults or children, or help and support people of all ages.
To see the routes to getting into each of these sectors, take a look at our Career Pathway.
You might work for:
It can be quite difficult to get a job in advisory and counselling services, although there are lots of voluntary opportunities.
Community learning and development work includes adult learning, youth work and a wide range of other community support and development jobs.
Job prospects still remain fairly good in social care services, with 2020 figures indicating a rise in employment. There are currently 209,690 workers, compared to 206,320 in 2019 - a rise of 1.6%. There is a current demand for more mental health workers and social workers.
The largest three sub-sectors are still housing support/care at home, care homes for adults and day care of children. Collectively these account for 79% of the social services workforce.
As a result of the increase in free childcare hours, the Scottish Government has been increasing training opportunities and routes to all parts of the Early Learning and Childcare sector since 2017, resulting in a record workforce of over 37,000 employees to date.
Currently around 4% of the daycare of children workforce is male. In an effort to increase this the Scottish Government have introduced a £50,000 Men in Early Years Challenge Fund aiming to increase the number of men enrolling for childhood practice courses.
The Scottish Social Services Council website has a section called ‘Careers and Education’, with lots of resources, including downloadable careers leaflets.
The Sector Skills Council, Skills for Care and Development, has the ‘A Question of Care’ website with information on careers in care.
