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Yvonne Roberts believes that the government’s recruitment campaign betrays a Disneyworld view of social care.

The government’s £2m campaign to attract 5,000 recruits to social work includes a visually striking comic strip in newspapers and magazines, which is fighting a strong battle to draw the reader’s eye.

The art work, however, is accompanied by stupefyingly condescending advertising copy plainly directed at individuals with no objections to being patronised and an insatiable appetite for adult fairy stories.

“People can be fascinating, mystifying, rewarding. They’re never boring…” is the banal recurring theme of the campaign. Never boring? Well, yes and no. The hurdles many have to overcome - such as bad housing, low income and poor education - can be monotonously repetitious.

One variation focuses on support for an autistic child. It asks: “What are the rewards?” The answer? “The children change. Inside, so do you…”

It’s the Disneyworld of social care. The truth is, of course, that when and how a child changes - if at all - depends on many factors, such as the type of autism, the resources available and the commitment of the family. As for the social worker’s personal state of internal combustion - that, in the long term, will be influenced by good management, a decent wage and a manageable workload, as much as by casework satisfaction alone.

The government, nevertheless, is extremely pleased with itself. Since mid-October, it has received over 5,000 calls and 3,700 visits to its website. However, I would contend that the biggest recruitment officer for social work hasn’t been the advertising campaign, but events since 11 September.

Since then, the narrative that has seized the hearts and minds of the public hasn’t been the customary one involving the rich, ruthless and    famous. Instead, as we all know, it has been tales of personal sacrifice and bravery; the merits of public service; and a greater recognition and value given to empathy, compassion and connectedness with those less fortunate - including the millions in Afghanistan starved, frozen and on the receiving end of bombardment from the “civilised” West.

Last month, Community Care raised the issue of values and social work (“Value judgements”, 11 October). It seems to me that today, as for the past few decades, those who will both give the most and, in turn,  receive some satisfaction from the profession are those who understand that social work isn’t - as this daft campaign insists - “all about people”. The campaign promotes the view that social work is a privatised, one-to-one, de-politicised activity, which has little to do with a system that militates against those who begin life with little. The message that tomorrow’s potential professionals ought to be hearing is that social work is about people, but it’s also about politics and power.