Scotland Looks To Displaced Care Workers To Add 45,000 Hours A Month

The Scottish Government says a recruitment scheme could add 45,000 hours of adult social-care work each month, but the figure describes potential staffing capacity rather than care already delivered—and cannot be matched against Scotland’s incomplete record of people waiting for support.

Scotland has placed a large number on a small and carefully targeted recruitment programme.

The Scottish Government says its Adult Social Care Displaced Workers Scheme could eventually generate as many as 45,000 additional working hours each month. The estimate is based on approximately 270 international care workers entering new employment after losing previous sponsored jobs through no fault of their own.

So far, 37 employers have used the latest phase of the scheme to recruit 120 workers. The hours attached to the larger figure are therefore a projection of what might become available if the expected recruitment is completed. They are not a record of 45,000 hours already worked, commissioned or delivered to people waiting for care.

Public Health Scotland reported that 6,454 people were waiting for an assessment of their social-care needs on 1 June 2026. A further 2,900 people had already been assessed but were waiting for a care-at-home package. Those awaiting care at home required an estimated 33,140 hours of support every week, 26 per cent more than the comparable figure a year earlier.

Even those totals do not describe the whole country.

Public Health Scotland warns that not every local authority can provide figures for every measure. Where missing returns cannot be estimated, the national total is labelled “Scotland – All Areas Submitted”. The agency says plainly that this will underestimate the true Scottish figure. Local authorities also periodically revise their submissions, while differences in definitions and recording practices mean comparisons between areas require caution.

Scotland can therefore produce a precise-looking estimate of the working hours a recruitment initiative might create, while lacking a complete national measure of the people and hours currently waiting for support.

A Scheme For Workers Already In Britain

The programme does not reopen international recruitment or bring a new group of care workers into Scotland from overseas.

It is designed for international workers already living in the UK who have lost sponsored employment, often because their former employer lost its sponsorship licence. Without another approved employer, those workers may face the disruption of losing their immigration status despite having experience in a sector with persistent vacancies.

Scottish social-care employers can receive targeted funding to meet costs associated with employing them, including Home Office fees and relocation expenses. Employers must hold a valid health and care visa sponsor licence, be registered with the Care Inspectorate and have a genuine vacancy they have been unable to fill. Each employer can seek assistance for up to three workers.

The scheme therefore serves two purposes. It helps retain trained workers who might otherwise be lost to Scottish social care, and it offers providers limited assistance with vacancies that have proved difficult to fill.

The Scottish Government initially committed £500,000 to the programme. In February, it projected that the scheme could secure up to 30,000 additional hours of adult social-care work each month, calculated on the basis of 200 displaced workers each working 37.5 hours a week. At that stage, as many as 250 workers were expected to be re-employed once checks were completed.

The latest 45,000-hour estimate is larger, but it remains an estimate of labour capacity. It does not reveal how many recruited workers have started work, how many hours their employers have commissioned, or which services and communities have received the additional capacity.

Hours Are Not Interchangeable

The temptation is to set the promised 45,000 monthly hours against the 33,140 weekly hours of care at home that people were waiting to receive in June. That would produce a dramatic comparison, but it would also be misleading.

The two figures do not measure the same thing.

Public Health Scotland’s total relates specifically to care-at-home packages that have been assessed but not provided. The recruitment scheme applies more widely across adult social care. Workers may be employed in care homes, housing support, care-at-home services or other registered provision.

Nor does an additional employee automatically create an additional package of care. Providers need contracts, commissioned hours, management capacity, transport, training and sufficient funding from councils or health and social care partnerships. A worker may fill an existing vacancy without expanding the total number of hours purchased by the public sector.

The scheme could nevertheless protect services from losing capacity and help employers cover work that would otherwise remain unfilled. That has value in a sector where staffing shortages are widespread.

At the end of 2024, 44 per cent of registered Scottish care services reported staff vacancies. In nine of the country’s 32 council areas, at least half of services had vacancies. Care-at-home providers, housing-support services and care homes for older people and other adults were among those reporting the greatest difficulty recruiting. Employers most commonly cited too few experienced, qualified or suitable applicants.

A Narrower Route Into Care Work

The scheme has also become more consequential following changes to UK immigration policy.

The UK Government closed the route to new overseas recruitment of care workers in July 2025. Home Office statistics show the number of Health and Care Worker visas issued to main applicants in caring personal-service occupations fell from 107,772 at the earlier peak to 1,397 in the year ending March 2026. The Home Office attributes the sharp recent fall partly to the end of overseas care-worker recruitment.

Immigration policy is reserved to Westminster, leaving the Scottish Government unable to reopen the visa route itself. Its displaced-worker programme operates within the remaining space: matching Scottish employers with people who are already in the country and still eligible to move to another licensed sponsor.

That may prevent experienced workers from being pushed out of a sector that needs them. It does not resolve the deeper questions surrounding social-care pay, retention, commissioning and the financial condition of providers.

What Scotland Still Cannot See

The next test should be delivery rather than projection.

The Scottish Government could publish how many workers have actually begun employment, their broad geographical distribution, the types of services employing them and the number of funded hours subsequently delivered. It could also explain whether the reopened phase has received additional funding beyond the original £500,000 allocation.

None of that requires identifying individual workers or employers. Aggregated figures would allow the public to see whether the programme is expanding care, maintaining existing services or primarily preventing further deterioration.

The incomplete waiting-list figures require equal attention. Public Health Scotland has been publishing national management information on social-care assessments and care-at-home delays since 2022, but some councils remain unable to supply each requested measure.

That leaves Scotland with two partial views of the same system: one measures potential workers without fully showing where their hours will go; the other measures unmet need without receiving complete information from every area.

The recruitment programme may be practical, humane and useful. It preserves people’s employment and offers some relief to services struggling to recruit. But 45,000 potential hours should not be mistaken for 45,000 hours of care delivered—or for evidence that Scotland’s waiting lists are beginning to clear.

For now, the country can count the hours it hopes to create more confidently than the care it has yet to provide.