How do you ensure that your recruitment approaches are reaching the right people? How do you know whether there is anything internally that you could do differently to increase recruitment? These are questions that every service, company or team will be asking themselves as they look to recruit, including the Foster Carer Recruitment team at Essex County Council (ECC).
These questions came as ECC is in the latter stages of a 10-year plan to increase the volume of in-house foster carers (a foster carer recruited by the local authority), and the proportion of children in care that are looked after by in-house foster carers. Recruiting foster carers is an ongoing challenge for all fostering services nationally, as reflected in the analysis by Ofsted which shows that, since 2021, there have been year-on-year decreases in the number of approved mainstream fostering households in both Independent Fostering Agencies and Local Authority sectors.
At the same time, there is concern that the foster carers that Essex do have are ageing and will eventually retire, further reducing foster care provision available to the organisation amid increasing demand.
Understanding and addressing this problem required a two-pronged approach that encompassed both the outward recruitment strategies and the inward process improvements.
The 'Out' – Identifying the Target Market
First, the Fostering Marketing team aimed to maximise their resources. However, they were unsure which areas to focus on for activities like leaflet drops and in-person events, and how best to communicate with potential foster carers.
We stepped in with a detailed analysis, combining data on households with spare rooms and Experian Mosaic profiles. This allowed us to pinpoint the most suitable and willing communities to become foster carers within Essex at a granular level.
Our findings revealed that West Essex had the highest concentration of households likely to foster. Armed with this insight, ECC’s fostering team launched a targeted recruitment campaign, including leaflet drops and collaborations with public sector partners like health services, police, and local community groups in West Essex.
The data also highlighted the need for increased investment in digital marketing, such as Google Ads, and found that Facebook usage was high among potential foster carers. Additionally, we recommended content to dispel common fostering misconceptions and myths. This led to the creation of engaging video assets for the social media campaign.
By focusing on high-potential areas and aligning marketing efforts with community preferences, the Council’s fostering programme is now better equipped to meet its long-term goal of increasing in-house foster carers.
The ‘In’ – ‘No further action’ enquiries
After implementing changes to the external recruitment approaches, the Fostering Marketing team turned their attention inward to examine internal processes once an enquiry is received. Not all enquiries lead to new foster carers, so we aimed to identify any potential contributing factors that could be addressed. To achieve this, we analysed enquiries which ended with ‘no further action’ (NFA) to spot patterns in the recruitment stages and communication channels used.
While the ‘outward’ analysis shone a light on new things for the team to explore, the ‘inward’ analysis evidenced the team’s instincts. For example, analysis showed how most NFA enquiries occurred shortly after initial contact, often because contact with the enquirer couldn’t be established. Whilst these enquiries did not lead to immediate recruitment, raising awareness about fostering is an essential part of recruitment campaigns. The data highlighted social media’s key role in this effort, which brought in two thirds of these NFAs, while also generating more NFAs which progressed to later recruitment stages than all other communication channels combined.
Then, what about NFA enquiries where contact is established, and recruitment progresses through to the next stages? Data shows that in over half of these instances, the enquirer ended the process because it wasn’t the right time for them to foster. This raises the question: ‘what is the right time’? It underscores the need for more detailed feedback from enquirers, which the Fostering Marketing team was already planning to gather. This insight will help us to better understand the circumstances preventing enquirers from starting their fostering journey, and to improve follow-up engagement with potential foster carers.
Our analysis of the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’ aspects of fostering recruitment examined three familiar datasets using reliable analytical approaches to uncover new insights and to confirm current courses of action. Our 'outward' analysis provided stakeholders with previously unavailable insights, informing proactive and targeted marketing and effective resource use. Our 'inward' analysis detailed the stages, reasons and communications channels of enquiries which didn’t convert into new foster carers, reinforcing the service’s initiatives and plans. This work goes some way in ensuring there are sufficient placements of the right type and in the right places to provide children with safe and loving homes that meet their needs.
Leave a comment