The first wave of the Government's three year initiative to encourage more people to enter social work and social care has been an overwhelming success with almost 14,000 calls to the information line and over 11,000 people visiting the website.

A targeted £1.5m national newspaper and radio advertising campaign was launched by Health Secretary Alan Milburn in October with the aim of recruiting more social workers and improving the public's perception of them.

Health Minister Jacqui Smith said:
"The response that we have had to the first six weeks of the campaign has exceeded our expectations and I am confident that we can build on this success over the three years of the recruitment drive.

"We put a great deal of effort into developing the campaign which was very much based on research that looked into the public's attitude to social work and what they thought social workers did on a day to day basis.

"Many people had a very negative view of social workers which was heavily influenced by the media and did not understand what social work entailed. With this evidence it was important to use the campaign to promote the positive work that many social workers carry out on a daily basis and to highlight the wide variety of situations that social workers find themselves in.

"It is obvious that the campaign has succeeded in doing this and we hope that some of the people who have sought further information on social work decide that they want to join what is an extremely rewarding and valuable profession and help us to increase the number of applicants for social work training by 5,000."

The research was carried out by the Central Office of Information on behalf of the Department of Health and also looked at the problem of retaining social workers. The Government is already working closely with Local Authorities to improve retention and recruitment and local employers have been encouraged to run their own targeted awareness campaigns alongside the national drive.

People interested in becoming qualified social workers can find out more information by calling the national helpline - 0845 6046404 or by logging on to the new website

Used courtesy of the Department of Health