The Workforce Specialist Service (WSS)

Dr Kirsten Wooley, GP, Workforce Specialist Service

The Workforce Specialist Service (WSS) is a primary care-led, multidisciplinary mental health service with expertise in confidentially treating regulated health and social services professionals. The providers specialise in caring for regulated professionals as patients, and as such are experts at the interface between regulation, employment and mental illness and addiction.

The WSS understands your needs as professionals with mental health and/or addiction problems, how this might impact on your ability to seek out help, and how your condition might impact on your work and potentially those in your care. The WSS provider is skilled at helping professionals return to work or training, and they treat practitioners with mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety or with more severe illnesses, such as bipolar affective disorder, personality disorders and with a range of addiction issues.

A regulated practitioner is any person working in health (primary or secondary) and social care who needs to register with a professional body and pay a subscription in addition to activity to uphold their licence. For social care individuals this would be SSSC (Scottish Social Services Council).

You can access the service in Scotland by following this link, or you can email prac.health@nhs.net or call 0300 0303 300.