Client: FACE
Industry: Public Sector
The cold, hard fact of the matter is that there’s a shortfall of over 10,000 foster families in the UK. (The figures for adoption are equally challenging.) And the national picture is mirrored directly in Cheshire East.
Because of our strong relationship with Cheshire East, we were initially asked to develop a recruitment campaign to run during national ‘Foster Care Fortnight’. It would be all-too-easy to dig out the moody photography, the mournful soundtrack and the images of troubled waifs. But you can’t use guilt as a motivating factor in something so ‘real’ as fostering. This was not a time for glib marketing; our strategic insight was that we had to illustrate the profound truth that ‘Fostering Brings Joy’.
Tales of positivity, happiness and progress raised enquiries from between 2 to 10 per month at the beginning of 2010 to over 450 enquiries a year for Fostering and 150 per year for Adoption. Even better, the success of our campaign has led to three more councils teaming up with Cheshire East Council and Opening Doors to roll everything out in their areas.
