§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many of the calls to the help line and visits to the website resulted in job applications in respect of the first phase of the social care recruitment campaign announced on 19 October 2001. [32660]
§ Jacqui Smith[holding answer 6 February 2002]: The main aim of the social care recruitment campaign is to raise the number of people applying for social 1236W work training by 5000 by 2004. As the current social work training takes two years, and the earliest that someone reacting to the campaign could join a course is autumn 2002, we would not expect the campaign to cause an increase in job applications until summer 2004 at the earliest.
§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what outcome measures have been set for each phase of the social care recruitment campaign announced on 19 October. [32672]
§ Jacqui Smith[holding answer 6 February 2002]: The overall aim of the social care recruitment campaign is to raise the number of people applying for social work training by 5,000 by 2004. We will monitor numbers applying for training through the figures provided by the Social Work Admissions Service. The figures for autumn 2002 (the first year to be affected by the campaign) will be publicly available in December 2002.
The target for the first phase of the campaign (19 October 2001 to 30 November 2001) was to generate at least 9,000 calls to the help line. This target was exceeded by over 60 per cent., with over 14,000 calls to the help line as well as over 11,000 visitors to the campaign website.