Psychology Workforce Planning Project

The need for reliable and up-to-date intelligence, both about psychology service requirements and the changing skill-mix in psychology services is essential to workforce planning.

The Psychology Workforce Planning Project was initiated in 2001 and is a collaboration between NHS Education for Scotland (NES) & ISD. The project aims to:

to provide an evidence based psychology workforce planning mechanism which will support decision making & priority setting in psychology workforce planning & educational development.

to provide those involved in the decision making process with an informed understanding of the complexities of the profession, and with a continual review & evaluation of the service.
to assess the skill-mix of staff employed within NHS psychology services.

A secure web based system is used to collect data on the NHS Scotland Psychology Workforce. The system allows each organisation direct access to their Psychology staff records. It allows the addition, amendment & termination of records directly on the web and errors associated with the record are flagged up at source. Data from this system are extracted annually at census date (30th Sept), analysed and published. Annual data is also collected on vacancies within psychology services, and on Clinical Psychology trainees at completion of their doctoral courses.

The latest report of 2007 data is published on 26th February 2008.

It is a joint publication between NES and ISD and includes:

wte and headcount data on the workforce of Clinical and Applied Psychologists in NHS Scotland.
wte and headcount data on the skill mix in Psychology Services.
data on Adult Mental Health Services.

data on Services Roles (eg direct & indirect patient contact, management, research & audit, CPD).

Links to previous publications:

Characteristics of the Workforce Supply in 2006
Charactistics of the Workforce Supply in 2005
Characteristics of the Workforce Supply in 2004
Characteristics of the Workforce Supply in 2003
Characteristics of the Workforce Supply in 2002
Data Supplement 2001
Clinical Psychology Workforce Planning Report

For further information please contact:

Liz Jamieson: Elizabeth.Jamieson@isd.csa.scot.nhs.uk
Lorraine Smyth: Lorraine.Smyth@isd.csa.scot.nhs.uk
Catriona Watt: Catriona.Watt@isd.csa.scot.nhs.uk

Main contact: Email