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Standards & Qualifications

You may be undertaking a qualification in order to register with the SSSC or as part of your continuous professional development. These qualifications will be underpinned by standards that you are expected to meet. Some qualifications will clearly relate to leadership and management eg SVQ 4 Leadership and Management for Care Services or BA Childhood Practice. Practice qualifications, eg SVQ 3 Health and Social Care, SVQ 3 Child Care Learning and Development or the Degree in Social Work, will also support you to develop skills essential to effective leadership, although the links to leadership may be less obvious.

Use the resources in this pathway to help you to develop the leadership knowledge, skills and values elements of these qualifications.

Visit the SSSC’s website to find out about qualifications suitable for registration with the SSSC.

Using Step into Leadership to support your qualification

By developing your leadership capability through Step into Leadership, you will be able to gather evidence to help you meet the knowledge, skills, values and requirements of your qualification which relate to leadership. To help you do this, we have highlighted the leadership elements of a number of relevant standards.

National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Leadership and Management for Care Services

The benchmark standard for management in all services except Day Care of Children Services is the Leadership and Management for Care Services NOS.

Practice Qualifications

We have identified how the following standards and awards encourage the development of leadership knowledge, values, skills and abilities. Please follow the links below to find out more:

Standard for Childhood Practice

The benchmark standard for management in Day Care of Children Services is the Standard for Childhood Practice. We have developed guidance and supporting documents to show the links between this standard and the six leadership capabilities below. Click on a capability to filter the relevant standards.

National Occupational Standards for Social Services (Children and Young People)

The National Occupational Standards in Social Services (Children and Young People) support the development of leadership skills. These standards have been mapped to the six leadership capabilities and guidance developed to describe how this mapping can be used to inform leadership development and to support the achievement of qualifications. Within the guidance examples from practice show how the mapping can be used. There are also evidence tools for managers and frontline workers and ready reckoners for managers and frontline workers to support your practice.

Below are the four core SVQ3 below.


Below are the four core SVQ4 units.


National Occupational Standards for Social Services and Healthcare

The National Occupational Standards in Social Services and Healthcare support the development of leadership skills. These standards have been mapped to the six leadership capabilities and guidance developed to describe how this mapping can be used to inform leadership development and to support the achievement of qualifications. Within the guidance examples from practice show how the mapping can be used. There are also evidence tools for managers and frontline workers and ready reckoners for managers and frontline workers to support your practice.

Below are the four core SVQ2 units.


Below are the four core SVQ3 units.


Below are the four core SVQ4 units.


The National Occupational Standards for Childhood Practice, Health and Social Care and Children and Young People are now available on the desktop or tablet version of this website, the mobile version of the standards will be updated in the near future.

Find out more

  • NOS Navigator SSSC tool to help you find your way around the NOS for the social service sector in Scotland.
Capabilities Positive plans for the way ahead Finding different ways of thinking and doing Recognising, exercising and improving your own leadership Leading in partnership and taking others with you Supporting others to be the best they can be Enabling people to develop and use their leadership capacity Guidance on how the organisational capabilities of the Continuous Learning Framework and other resources can support the development of a leadership learning culture

Plan Your Pathway

Everyone's leadership learning is different.  We've put together a selection of tools to help you assess where you are now and what you want to achieve on your leadership journey.

Read more

Codes of Practice

These set a clear benchmark in standards for professional skills, honesty and integrity. Whilst they do not mention leadership specifically, many of the Codes relate to aspects of leadership capability.

Codes of Practice

360degree tool
learning log