Fostering is vital for the most vulnerable children. Of more than 6,500 children in foster care who responded to an Ofsted survey last year, 99% said they ‘always felt safe' in their fostering family.

The award-winning short film Any of Us, released in October last year in conjunction with CAN Digital, is the story of Chloe and three potential foster parents. It powerfully demonstrates how more children would enjoy this feeling of safety if more adults could see the attributes to be a good foster carer in themselves.

The film (available on YouTube) is professionally made to very high production standards. But it wasn't created just for art's sake. It was funded by more than 80 council fostering services (including children's trusts) around the UK, sharing production, administration and launch event costs.

Fostering teams are using the film – including bite-size clips and stills – as content for their foster carer recruitment marketing campaigns. And when these campaigns are sufficiently funded, they have been shown to drive engagement and enquiries that save children's services around £20,000 for every £1,000 of media spend.

Great deal of exposure

It can't fail to make sense for a local authority to chip in a modest sum from its marketing budget for a high-quality film they could never afford on their own. Especially one that gains a great deal of exposure.

Any of Us led to lots of local media coverage for many of the teams who participated – on TV, radio and in the press. When the film won both Best Collaboration and Best Creative Comms categories at the UnAwards – which recognises excellence in public sector communications – this led to further media opportunities.

It also drove a surge in engagement on their social channels. In the first month, the 54 councils who reported their metrics between them achieved around 250,000 views and almost 10,000 clicks to their fostering webpages.

But this isn't the whole story. It's one thing to create a brilliant piece of content, but it takes a decent marketing budget to use it effectively to attract many more potential foster carers.

The 16 participating councils who used digital paid-for media in their marketing around the film had more than 550,000 views and 15,000 clicks to their fostering pages between them.

However, most council fostering services have been hamstrung with limited resources and lack of marketing strategy – relying on organic and/or traditional unmeasurable (and usually ineffective) channels and hoping for the best.

This lack of investment in foster care recruitment marketing isn't attracting enough quality enquirers who go on to become foster carers, allowing independent fostering agencies (IFAs) to capitalise by charging councils to place children with carers they have recruited.

It's a commercial battleground as much as one for hearts and minds. IFAs compete with both local authorities and each other for potential foster carers. They invest heavily in paid-for search and other marketing and in making sure all their online content is first rate.

According to Ofsted, a massive 79% of all enquiries and 62% of applications are to IFAs. Their fees are expensive. A council saves on average around £20k a year in IFA fees for every fostering household they recruit themselves.

There was a loss of 1,050 fostering households last year according to Government statistics and there has been a downward trend in applications over the past five years. The Fostering Network says 6,000 new fostering households are needed to meet current demand.

Millions of pounds could be saved if most children looked after were placed with councils' own foster carers. How much more good work could children's services do with such sums?

The film project exemplifies how council fostering services can both work together to show a united front (‘foster with your local authority') and use standout content as part of measurable, properly funded campaigns to compete with IFAs.

As part of our wider work with council fostering teams, CAN collates benchmarking data from across the UK. To date, the 35 councils taking part have achieved an average of £19,876 per £1k spend using online advertising.

Any of Us is part of an ongoing series of short fostering films. Coventry City Council originated the concept several years ago and asked CAN to manage the project when they no longer had the resources.

The latest film Everything – currently in production and set for release in October – is being co-funded by more than 100 council fostering teams.

Foster carer recruitment can be time-consuming, resource-heavy and costly. Yet it is one of the few areas of council work in which huge invest-to-save returns can be made

I host CAN's fostering recruitment hub for local authorities, where we aim to ease the burden on teams through sharing best practice and resources. The most common recurring theme in councils who recruit good numbers of foster carers is the support they get within their organisation.

When senior leadership recognises the importance of fostering and makes recruitment a priority, they can unblock internal obstacles that prevent fostering services reaching the right target audiences and converting interest into approvals.

If more fostering teams were given this sort of support, together the whole council fostering community could achieve amazing things for children.

 

John Cooper is a fostering recruitment specialist at CAN Digital – an advertising agency delivering digital campaigns with the public sector for the past decade – and previously worked in foster carer recruitment for two local authorities and a children's trust

john.cooper@can-digital.net