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After years of being ignored, elderly care, care homes and carers seem to be flavour of the month in the media.

The BBC is running its month-long ‘Care in the UK’ season on Radio 4 and online, while the Daily Mail has been running its ‘Dignity for the Elderly’ campaign for some time. Meanwhile, several other national daily newspapers have carried in-depth articles on elderly care in recent weeks.

The BBC especially seems to be pushing the topic, with features all month on Radio 4's Woman’s Hour and You and Yours. These have included Gordon Brown talking yesterday on Woman’s Hour about his plans for social care, as well as TV presenter Tony Robinson last week discussing his mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s and experience of putting her into a nursing home on You and Yours.

All this is welcome news. For too long care for the elderly has almost been hidden, pushed down the national news agenda in favour of ‘sexier’ issues involving younger people.

If elderly care has made the news, it is often for the wrong reasons, such as an example of a care home resident being abused. As a result, many people know little or nothing about the true state of elderly care.

With an emphasis on the human angle, and real life experiences of care, the BBC’s programmes should hopefully jerk a few heart strings and demonstrate that older people in residential care are still people and should not be dismissed as “past it”. Who knows, it might even help to change a few attitudes in society.

But while it will get people talking now, the key is ensuring that after this season of programmes has ended elderly care remains near the top of the news agenda and isn’t forgotten when the next topic du jour comes along.

Only by keeping the sector in the news will there be a chance of changing attitudes and influencing the government’s policy – the forthcoming Green Paper on care funding will shape the sector for years to come. This is an opportunity not to be missed and all organisations involved in the care sector should ensure they do their utmost to keep up a flow of news.