A new advertising campaign that aims to show the rewards of a career in social care is to launch this week.

The Department of Health's recruitment drive for social care jobs will run on televisions from this week until the 20th of March. The broadcast adverts will be part of a cross-media campaign, which will also advertise social care as a career choice in UK print publications and face-to-face events across the country.

All three of the adverts intended for broadcast will draw upon the testimonies of real-life people in real social care jobs, talking about what makes their job special. In one, a care worker, Laura, who supports a man with a learning disability, explains that she is happy to know she has made a real difference when she goes home after work.

Currently, over 1.5 million people are employed in the adult social care sector. This area of the profession is the major source of domiciliary care jobs in the UK, as those born with learning disabilities and other problems often need assistance throughout their entire life, past the point where families can manage their care independently.

The Department of Health expects that nearly 200,000 social care jobs will be advertised over the coming year based on existing trends of staff shortages and increasing demand for care services. In the next 20 years, the number of people aged over 65 in England will increase by nearly 50% - and those over 85 will double.

These figures have prompted the timing of the recruitment campaign, which seeks to capitalise on a recent survey that suggested that more than a third of people would consider changing careers into social care.

In 2009, the DoH ran a similar campaign. Over 32,000 people contacted their information telephone line enquiring about a career in social care and over 385,000 unique visitors were recorded on the website. According to a follow up survey from the DoH, 58% of those who had called the line and who responded to the survey had taken action to find work in social care.