the voice of foster care
Recruiting the
Recruiting the
foster care
foster care
workforce of
workforce of
the future
the future
A guide for
fostering services
Helen Clarke
Contents
Foreword 2
Acknowledgements 3
1. Why choose a career in fostering? 4
What are we offering foster families? 4
Are there enough people out there wanting to foster? 5
Getting our message right 6
How long do people stay? 7
2. The recruitment team 9
Roles of the post responsible for recruitment 9
Identifying who else is involved 10
Who does what at which stage? 12
3. The recruitment strategy – getting it right 15
How big should a recruitment strategy be? 15
How do you decide what should really be done? 16
Putting effective systems in place 20
Identifying what works best 21
How do you compare with other fostering services? 21
4. Finding the people who could foster 22
Annual recruitment target 22
How do you identify a recruitment target? 22
What information can be gathered? 22
Does your fostering service have the capacity to recruit new foster carers? 25
5. Promoting foster care 26
What methods work best? 26
Continually spreading the word 27
How much does it cost? 29
6. Managing interest and encouraging enquiries 30
Making it easy 30
First impressions count 30
Gathering information and encouraging applicants 31
Providing information and allaying initial concerns 32
Meeting the team 33
7. Approving new fostering households 36
One in 10 – the truth about conversion rates 36
Keeping in touch and not losing people 37
Managing the assessment process 38
Conclusion 40
Appendix Support that is essential to foster families 41
Foreword
The Fostering Network has for many years been working with fostering services to assist them in recruiting and retaining the foster carers they need to look after the over 50,000 children living in foster care in the UK on any one day.
Since July 2004, with funding from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, we have been working with fostering services by supporting them and offering advice and guidance on how to improve the ways that foster carers are attracted and encouraged to stay in the profession. This guide is the culmination of over five years work as part of the Attracting and Keeping Carers project and builds on previous publications such as the Good Practice Guidelines for the
Recruitment of Foster Carers and the interim report Improving Effectiveness in Foster Care Recruitment.
This publication draws on evidence from a recent survey of fostering services, follow-up interviews, and focus group work with representatives from local authorities and independent fostering providers, as well as feedback from an ongoing programme of training events, seminars, workshops and conferences.
It reflects where the sector has got to with recruitment and looks towards a future where a systematic, planned and strategic approach is adopted by every fostering service allowing greater co-operation, collaboration, discussion and development to ensure that we build a workforce that more people will aspire to join. One that is recognised, valued and rewarded for the extraordinary work that foster carers do.
Within this report key elements required to recruit foster carers have been drawn together in one helpful guide for fostering services, both local authorities and independent fostering providers. This provides the opportunity to learn from fostering services’ past experiences and to draw on examples of good practice and proven successes.
Together we can work towards a future where we can encourage the people we need to take on a unique role in the children’s workforce – that of being a foster carer.
Robert Tapsfield Chief Executive
Acknowledgements
The Fostering Network would like to thank all the fostering services that have engaged in events and activities as part of the Attracting and Keeping Carers project since it began in 2004.
This guide is the result of a year-long project commencing with a one-day workshop in December 2008. The Fostering Network would like to thank Martin Farrell for facilitating the workshop and the following representatives from fostering services for attending and contributing:
Ruth Martin, Bath and North East Somerset Flo Chiwetu, Banya Fostering
Sarah Bebbington, Bradford City Council Karen Amegashitsi, Bristol City Council Florence Coulter, Durham County Council Martin Gilboy, Fostering Solutions
Gill Burtwell and Jane Gallagher, Hampshire County Council Alice Moore, Hertfordshire County Council
Susan Buckman, London Borough of Waltham Forest Angie Hanson, TACT East London
In total 81 fostering services (57 local authorities in England, nine in Wales and 15 independent fostering providers) kindly took the time to respond to an online survey carried out in 2009. The following people also generously spared their time to discuss further their fostering service’s experiences and challenges in telephone interviews held in late 2009.
Maria White, Oxfordshire County Council Sally Frost, Suffolk County Council
Caroline Quint, Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council Julie Ellis, St Helens Council
Clive Attard, Leicestershire County Council
Amanda Fritz and Barbara Hewett, Staffordshire County Council Sue Westwood, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council
1.
Why choose a career in fostering?
On an annual basis fostering services collectively invest millions of pounds to promote their need for foster carers, process applications and support foster families in their role. It is estimated that each new foster family costs £11, 5001 to recruit (this includes spending on advertisements,
preparation training and assessment time). Fostering services are continually looking for ultimate success in their recruitment of foster carers - they are looking for a magic solution to the continual shortage of foster carers. However, to be truly successful at recruiting the foster carers of the future we need to be confident that we are encouraging people into a service that they would want to join.
In 2004 the Fostering Network announced a shortage of 10,000 foster carers in the UK. This was based on a survey of local authorities with the specific intention of identifying how many additional foster families were needed on top of the current pool to be able to offer all children and young people in care placement choice.
Providing placement stability and finding a foster family that can meet the needs of all looked-after children first time is at the centre of a fostering service’s objectives.
What are we offering foster families?
The Fostering Network recently carried out surveys as part of our new campaign, Together for Change. We asked foster carers about their views on payments, support and learning and
development opportunities. The feedback from our members showed a very varied picture across the country. Most worryingly, the surveys found a significant number of foster carers stating that they had considered ceasing to foster in the past year or two. 40 per cent of foster carers had seriously considered ceasing to work for their fostering service due to a lack of support2 and 36
per cent seriously considering giving up fostering because it does not provide a living wage3.
Without improving what is offered to foster families, the sector will continue to find it very difficult to attract enough people to fostering.
Furthermore, the task of fostering can be very challenging. Foster families look after children with a whole range of needs and with challenging behaviour. Caring for children on a day-to-day basis requires hard work and dedication and foster carers benefit from round the clock,
accessible and flexible support from their fostering service.
Therefore, central to any fostering service’s success in the recruitment of foster carers is the ‘product’. By the product we mean everything we are offering to and expecting from people when they embark upon a career in fostering. If fostering services are serious about recruiting foster carers they need to be confident they are making the proposition as attractive as possible. The appendix looks at a range of support and services that are invaluable to foster families, without which fostering services will continue to struggle to attract and retain sufficient numbers of people.
1 Tapsfield, R and Collier, F The Cost of Foster Care (The Fostering Network and BAAF, 2005) 2 Clarke, H Getting the Support they Need (The Fostering Network, 2009)
Six out of 10 fostering
services did not meet
their recruitment
target in 2008-09.
Nearly half of fostering
services reported having
difficulty recruiting people
from specific minority
ethnic groups in 2008-09.
Are there enough people out there wanting to foster?
Although we know a lot still needs to be done to invest properly and fully in fostering, fostering services report significant interest from the public. Respondees to the recent survey carried out by the Fostering Network shared that nearly 15,000 people had contacted just over 35 fostering services in 2008-09 (this figure included a substantial number of enquiries to three of England’s largest county councils and two of the largest independent fostering providers with offices across the country).
Although general interest in fostering appears to be high, fostering services are finding that very few enquirers progress to become an approved foster family. Worryingly recruitment targets are not being met by many fostering services.
Fostering services reported a number of reasons for not
managing to recruit foster carers during 2008-09. The top three reasons were:
1. Lack of applications from suitable people. 2. Applicants with unsuitable accommodation. 3. Staff shortages so unable to process applications.
Lack of applications from suitable people
It is true that most people considering fostering are motivated by a desire to help children, and this will be at the root of any decision to foster. However, whether or not they have the skills and qualities to foster is another matter. New applicants to fostering have to demonstrate that they meet induction standards and will follow a development plan supported by their supervising social worker. They will also be working with children with often challenging behaviour alongside a team of other professionals. Fostering is not for everyone and we need to be even more clear about who we do need and attract them to the profession by rewarding and supporting them properly.
Fostering services also reported not being able to find enough people to come forward from certain minority ethnic communities. A quarter of fostering services had set goals which varied from specific targets to just trying to recruit people from as wide a range of ethnic
backgrounds as possible. Fostering services reported acute
shortages in some instances, and mentioned the challenges of finding foster carers in response to a recent, often unexpected, recruitment need often linked to refugee and asylum seeking children.
Applications with unsuitable accommodation
Fostering services, particularly in urban areas or areas of deprivation, are struggling to find enough people to come forward to foster who have sufficient space in their homes. Applicants do not always understand that it is inappropriate for a looked-after child to share a room with their own children.
Furthermore, a recent survey of over 300 current foster carers carried out by the Centre for Social Justice revealed that 55 per cent were aged 35 to 54 and living in two parent families4. This
finding resonates with other recent studies and is a cause for concern for fostering services; developments in British society mean that fewer households can afford not be working and are able to offer a bedroom to one or more foster child, especially as a greater number of children are staying at home with their parents well into their 20s.
Staff shortages
There is a national shortage of social workers and some posts in fostering services are currently vacant. There is also not always sufficient funding to staff teams at the level required to process applications to foster. This can mean that applicants are put on hold or assessments take many months to complete, with social workers having to prioritise other aspects of their role. This could also have an impact right at the very early stages with initial enquiries remaining unanswered.
Getting our message right
How people are encouraged into fostering in the future is definitely going to be a challenge. Focusing exclusively on children in promotional materials and communication tools is not enough.
TOP TIP
Fostering services should spend time talking to their foster carers about what attracted them to fostering, as well as what keeps them fostering and what would put them off. After all they decided that they wanted to foster children and may be able to help identify what will work in encouraging other people.
It is important to challenge and break down the preconceptions/stereotypes held about fostering, without alienating current foster carers and offending children and young people in care.
In 2007-08 the Fostering Network, funded by the Children’s Workforce Development Council, commissioned market research to help identify how to encourage more people into a career in fostering5. It found that the way the task of fostering is communicated is essential for motivating
people.
The findings recommended that:
• In order to tackle the challenge of getting enough of the right people to come forward we need
to portray a realistic but not offputting view of fostering. By knowing more about who we are good at attracting and who is more likely to be a committed foster carer, we have more chance of success.
• Promotional work needs to highlight why people could be good foster carers and get people to
consider fostering in the first place. A lot of promotional materials assume that people are already thinking about fostering.
4Couldn’t Care Less: A policy report from the Children in Care Working Group (The Centre for Social Justice, 2008) www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk
55 per cent of fostering
services reported losing
10 per cent or less of
their fostering households
in 2008-09.
Just over half of fostering services
achieved a net gain in the number
of fostering households in 2008-09.
• Fostering services could be more successful if they thought more about who they really
needed – profiling current and potential foster carers and considering their core values and motivations to help devise a recruitment message.
• It is a good idea to focus communication on emphasising the skills and qualities needed to be
a good foster carer.
• Word of mouth remains the most successful recruitment tool as foster carers can share what
they do, their status in the community and the rewards (both emotional and financial) they gain from providing foster care.
• Applicants need supporting and motivating throughout the whole journey from initial interest
through to contacting the fostering service and eventually going on to be an approved foster family.
How long do people stay?
Previous studies have identified that less than 10 per cent of foster carers cease fostering every year6. Those foster carers who left spent an average of seven and a half years fostering, with a
quarter fostering for more than 10 years. Retirements and ceasing to foster
The Fostering Network’s survey asked fostering services to tell us about the number of foster families that left their service during 2008-09, and the reasons for this. 58 fostering services provided data on the number of foster families that left, which amounted to nine per cent of their workforce.
Fostering services reported a range of different reasons for their foster carers ceasing to foster. The most common was retirement (47 per cent), followed by personal reasons such as poor health (16 per cent). Fostering services deregistered some foster carers (12 per cent) and others (3 per cent) left because they were dissatisfied with treatment by their fostering service.
In 2009 the Fostering Network published a report warning of an impending recruitment crisis as two-thirds of the current fostering workforce is aged over 507. It is essential that fostering
services regularly review their pool of foster carers and where possible anticipate when retirements are likely to happen, either linked to the age of the foster carers or the ending of a particular placement. It is important that supervising social workers keep the post responsible for recruitment informed of potential retirements.
Turnover of foster carers
Often fostering services are only managing to maintain their pool of foster carers – recruiting at best only as many as the number who are leaving. In the recent survey, fostering services were asked about the number of foster households recruited in 2008-09 and the number which left. Of the 30 fostering services that provided this
6 Triseliotis J, Borland M and Hill M Delivering Foster Care (BAAF, 2000) 7 Clarke H The Age of Foster Care (The Fostering Network, 2009)
information, just over a half managed to achieve a net gain on their number of fostering households.
A fostering service needs to manage their available workforce and make sure that they are doing all that is possible to encourage people to continue fostering for as long as they want to. The length of the time it takes to assess a new family means that gaps are rarely filled quickly and fostering services might find themselves deficient of resources for quite some time if they do not keep on top of recruitment.
Exit interviews
The importance of an exit interview must not be undervalued. It is essential to hear the views of all those foster carers leaving a fostering service irrespective of the reasons for their departure. By asking foster carers to feed back, a fostering service can explore ways to improve its provision of support in the future.
There are a variety of different ways to ask for this feedback. For example, foster carers can be invited to respond to a short questionnaire about their experiences with the service, or a
supervising social worker can carry out a short exit interview asking for feedback on a number of key areas. Team managers and directors of fostering services also carry out exit interviews for some fostering services.
What to cover in an exit interview:
• Foster carer’s reason(s) for leaving the service.
• Foster carer’s views on the support provided by the fostering service.
• Discussion about possible ways in which the foster carer might continue to be involved
(depending on their reason for leaving).
• Any recommendations from the foster carer on the future development of the fostering
service.
• Opportunity for the foster carer to feed back further in writing.
To get the most out of any exit interview it is important that the foster carer feels comfortable confiding in the person to whom they are talking. Even if they have had a generally positive experience with the fostering service, it is still helpful if they feel they can speak candidly about their experience and that their views will be fed back to inform the future development of the service.
Only a third of fostering
services require the post
responsible for recruitment
to have a background in
recruitment.
2.
The recruitment team
Fostering services with a dedicated recruitment post (regardless of professional background) have more success in recruiting foster carers8. The skills set required by fostering services for this
post can vary hugely. In some instances this post is not a qualified social worker and two-thirds of fostering services, as reported in the recent survey, expect the post to have a background in or experience of marketing. It is of course possible to develop skills and gain experience in the role but fostering services have to be mindful of the wide range of tasks expected of this post. If they do not directly have the experience the service should ensure that they can call on the assistance of those who do. HR and marketing departments can provide excellent advice and support.
Having a dedicated recruitment post has a range of benefits for a fostering service keen to improve its recruitment of foster carers. These include:
• Allocated time to focus fully and become experts on the task of recruiting foster carers. • Ability to take full responsibility for the recruitment of foster carers and ownership of the
strategy and process.
• Availability of time to focus on the needs of the fostering service and fully research and
implement a strategic approach to recruitment.
• Opportunity to free up time for colleagues to focus on their own roles, such as supervising
placements, handling placements of looked-after children and developing other areas of the fostering service.
• Time to develop contacts within the fostering service and the wider community.
The range of skills involved reflects the many stages of the recruitment process and the need to work across the whole of the fostering service. It is essential that this post has links throughout the fostering service and should not be working in isolation. It is useful for them to attend a range of team meetings and to be kept informed about trends in the children needing foster care, the use of the current pool of foster carers, the commissioning of placements with other fostering services and colleagues recruiting to other posts in the children’s workforce.
Roles of the post responsible for recruitment
Fostering services have wide ranging expectations of the roles and responsibilities of the person who has main responsibility for recruitment of foster carers. Core tasks include:
• Writing, monitoring and evaluating the fostering service’s recruitment strategy. • Managing the recruitment budget.
• Developing and producing promotional materials.
• Promoting the need for foster carers in the local media and area. • Organising information sessions and other recruitment events.
• Networking and outreach work with community organisations and groups.
• Co-ordinating the fostering service’s approach to recruitment and motivating and keeping the
team informed.
90 per cent of
fostering services
involved foster
carers in their
recruitment in
2008-09.
Other responsibilities might also include:
• Performance management of all recruitment activity including of some of the staff involved. • Analysis of quantity and types of people recruited against targets.
• Evaluation of service provided and quality of that service. • Organisation and supervision of the pre-approval training. • Tracking enquiries throughout the process.
• Writing and editing newsletters.
• Development of packages, strategies and practices to retain foster carers. • Development of website.
• Management of relationships with external suppliers such as PR and marketing agencies.
Identifying who else is involved
Fostering services that involve the whole team and a range of other key individuals have more success in recruiting foster carers9. Being clear about and defining roles and responsibilities for
the recruitment of foster carers among staff members is essential. Fostering services should set objectives in annual appraisals and performance reviews which can also be linked back to the recruitment strategy.
Looking at involving other parts of the fostering service and keeping them up to date and informed about recruitment is also important.
Foster carers
Foster carers are already doing it. They will remember why they became foster carers and can bring the role to life by sharing their experiences. Any prospective foster carer is likely to be keen to hear from those actually caring for children. In addition, foster carers can provide invaluable access into community, religious and minority ethnic groups that the fostering service might have had difficulty developing a
relationship with in the past. TOP TIP
Foster carers may well have a number of useful links with community groups which could be helpful for recruitment. Some fostering services have plotted the location of their foster families and looked-after children on a map to help identify areas where there is a real need, communities more interested in the idea of fostering and locations for advertising – such as being covered by a particular newspaper.
Foster carers can advise which local newspapers and radio stations they read and listen to, which may be useful in terms of targeting advertisements. Foster carers are widely used by fostering services to share their stories in the local media. By working with the local media at the time of a big recruitment push, such as Foster Care Fortnight, the experiences shared by foster carers can help gain valuable, and free of charge, publicity for the campaign.
Social workers
Qualified and student social workers in a wide range of positions in the fostering service have a role to play in the recruitment of foster carers. As well as handling initial enquiries, going on
initial home visits and assessing new foster families, they might also co-deliver The Skills to Foster trainingcourses, so can provide a lot of useful information about recent and current applicants.
Encouraging supervising social workers to feed back to the recruitment team their experiences of new recruits and the foster carers they supervise can also be very enlightening and help influence priorities for the recruitment strategy.
Children’s social workers should also be consulted and encouraged to be involved in information sessions, providing feedback on the use of the current pool of foster carers and sharing success stories for foster families.
Marketing and PR team
This is particularly vital if the post responsible for recruitment has little or no previous experience in these areas. Some fostering services work with their in-house team to develop marketing and promotional materials. It is also beneficial to make use of the expertise of the press team as communications professionals. They have experience and skills that social work staff might not, such as identifying news hooks, seeing promotional opportunities in recent changes within the service or creating responses to developments at a national level. They might already have strong contacts with local newspapers and radio stations and ideas about what else is happening in the area on which fostering promotion could ‘piggy back’.
The downside is that there is sometimes not capacity internally within a local authority to support fostering services with their recruitment activity. Demonstrating how a successful working relationship would be beneficial to the whole organisation in the recruitment strategy could help influence this and make available much needed resources.
Administrative support
Making good use of administrative support and having sufficient staff levels to support all stages of recruitment are essential. Support staff can field initial enquiries, arrange mailings, catalogue and monitor all data, organise events and support assessors with some aspects of assessments, such as the very time consuming task of chasing up CRB checks and references.
Children and young people
A surprisingly small number of fostering services work with children and young people to help with the recruitment of foster carers. For those fostering services which do, the input of both the sons and daughters of foster carers and looked-after children has been invaluable.
Fostering panel
Working closely with and involving the panel in recruitment can have a significant effect. They can offer advice and feedback about what is and is not working and where they see a real need to recruit more foster carers. In addition they can raise any concerns they have over the standard of new foster carers being assessed for approval, or when reviewing current foster carers’ approval annually.
Human resources department
Approved foster carers are self employed but it will still be useful and advisable to consult with the HR department to seek advice on recruitment practices and procedures. When targeting prospective foster carers you are ultimately asking them to take on a new ‘job’ and therefore the role should have the same clear job description and person specification as any other position in
the fostering service. The fostering service should also follow organisation wide recruitment practices and ensure that the process is open to all with no discriminatory practices.
Councillors
All elected members have a responsibility as corporate parents to the children coming into their care. Councillors can be very useful to fostering services if they understand the role they play in improving the lives of looked-after children and young people.
Councillors can be particularly useful for attracting the media, simply by attending a balloon launch, for example, or offering a quote for a press release. Many fostering services hold award ceremonies for their foster carers and elected members or mayors are invited to give awards and meet and celebrate their foster carers.
Director of children’s services
Again, the directors of children’s services have a role as corporate parents. They take personal responsibility on behalf of the local authority for improving the full range of support offered to the children in and leaving care.
With the development of Children’s Trusts it is important that directors are kept informed of the work of the fostering service and what is being done to improve standards for children in care. A multi-service approach within the council should enable better co-operation and communication across the wide variety of services looked-after children and young people need.
Who does what at which stage?
If a fostering service is serious about managing a rise in enquiries and processing applications swiftly and efficiently they need to ensure that sufficient resources are afforded to the task. Depending on the size of a fostering service a considerable number of people could be participating in or responsible for many of the stages of recruitment.
Stage Posts and responsibilities
Planning and resources The whole fostering service including foster carers should be consulted, and involved where appropriate, to gather a thorough understanding of the needs of the fostering service, ability to offer placement choice and the needs of looked-after children and young people.
Senior management need to be briefed and informed to help allocate additional resources if required, based on sound evidence from a thorough audit and fully prepared strategy.
Awareness raising The whole fostering service can play a role in promoting the need for foster carers, especially current foster carers and their sons and daughters, as well as care experienced young people.
Handling initial enquiries
Administrative staff
Social workers (on duty desk or other)
Recruitment officer Information sessions
and initial visits
Foster carers Social workers Administrative staff
Sons and daughters of foster carers Care experienced young people Team manager
Supporting through the approval process
Administrative staff Assessing social workers
Foster carers – a number of fostering services have established buddying or mentoring schemes which aim to match foster carers with applicants to support them through the recruitment process – this can be beneficial as not only will an experienced/impartial person be available to talk through the many issues raised
throughout, but they will also be able to keep people engaged during the sometimes lengthy process10.
Pre-approval training Trainers – delivering The Skills to Foster requires two trained and experienced trainers, one of whom should be a foster carer. Fostering services have developed a range of different models for how they deliver the training.
Assessing social worker – good practice recommends that assessing social workers are allocated prior to pre-approval training
commencing. This enables the trainers to feed back to the named social worker what they have observed of the applicants, gives the opportunity to view the applicants taking part in the assessment and enables the assessor to follow up on issues raised in the training.
Care experienced young people – fostering services with established groups for care experienced young people have looked at how they can be involved in this part of the process. Some have developed parts of the training course that can be delivered by young people or have allocated the time for presentations and opportunities for applicants to meet with them during the course.
10 To find out more about establishing and running a peer mentoring scheme see Newstone, S Foster Carer
Sons and daughters of foster carers – as well as the sons and daughters of foster carers being provided training (a dedicated module forms part of The Skills to Foster), asking those whose parents already foster to share their experiences as part of the training programme is worthwhile.
Assessment Assessing social worker – having sufficient levels of staff with time to dedicate to assessments is really important. Fostering services use a range of different models to manage this part of the process, such as a dedicated team, supervising social workers being allocated, or independent social workers or sessional workers being
contracted.
Foster carers – applicants linked to a mentor or buddy are able to talk about issues raised, which they can find really helpful and affirming.
Administrative staff – arranging meetings, gaining references and chasing up CRB checks can be very time consuming and could be managed by a member of the fostering service’s support team.
Fostering panel Foster carers – if the prospective foster family has been provided with a buddy then they could go along to the panel meeting to offer their support.
Assessing social worker – keeping the applicants clear about timescales and being available to accompany them to the panel meeting offers a great deal of reassurance.
Approval Supervising social worker – if this is a different person to the member of staff carrying out the assessment then a well supported transition needs to take place, as it is likely during the assessment process the new foster family will have developed a relationship with the assessing social worker.
Foster carers – if the applicant did not have a buddy or mentor allocated to them during the assessment process, then receiving support from a peer can make all the difference in their first year of fostering and throughout their careers.
85 per cent of
fostering services
had a written
recruitment strategy
in 2008-09.
3.
The recruitment strategy – getting it right
All fostering services need a strategy for the recruitment of foster carers. Without a comprehensive strategy they will be less likely to recruit the type of foster carers required to meet the needs of looked-after children and young people. A lot of information needs to go into a recruitment strategy to help the service focus on and plan their activities.
How big should a recruitment strategy be?
Fostering services’ recruitment strategies vary hugely. They can cover a wide range of areas, but tend to fall within four basic models:
1. A comprehensive long-term plan that predicts trends in the looked-after population and has clear and specific targets for the recruitment of new fostering households and commissioning of placements from independent fostering providers.
2. A 12-month plan of activity with clear timescales for promotional activity linked to information events, The Skills to Foster training, availability of assessing social workers and fostering panel meetings.
3. A marketing plan with activities scheduled throughout the year and systems in place to monitor and evaluate achievements.
4. A fostering service-wide strategy with clear allocation of responsibilities to teams and individual posts.
Whichever model is preferred, and depending on the size of the fostering service and the resources available, every fostering service should consider incorporating the following:
• Information about the fostering services resources and performance – including an analysis
of the looked-after population and the current availability of fostering households. Consider also including an analysis of neighbouring fostering services and employers which may be direct competition. Carry out a full profile of the area.
• Plan of what is to be achieved – including a recruitment target, methods to promote the need
for foster carers, an allocated budget and clear breakdown of staff involved and their responsibilities.
• Method of review – implementing a system to monitor and evaluate activity.
What is really important is that one post takes responsibility for overseeing the recruitment strategy and monitoring and evaluating successes throughout the year, and determining whether or not the fostering service is on track to achieve its set goals and targets.
How do you decide what should really be done?
Following the completion of a full audit of the fostering service (as detailed in chapter 4), it will be possible to set clear objectives for the recruitment strategy. The fostering service will need to be clear about how this is going to be achieved and the ways in which the fostering service will monitor its activity and evaluate annually. A word of caution is required here as it is rare that a fostering service will begin to see significant improvements within the first 12 months of implementing a new strategy. A longer view is required, with improvements measured over at least three years to take account of the lengthy approval process.
1. Set objectives
Identifying a recruitment target is crucial. Further objectives could include generating an increase in the number of initial enquiries or improving the conversion rate of initial enquiries to approved fostering households.
2. Identify successful methods to attract people
Carry out a full review of how you have promoted your need for foster carers in the past. This should include a review of all previous marketing activity – including materials, activity, timescales and location, and analysing data on:
• Number of enquiries – try collecting and monitoring on a monthly basis and
identifying trends such as a rise in enquiries following a radio advertisement or article in a newspaper.
• Source of enquiries – to make analysing easier set up a system to monitor
enquiries based on a range of fixed criteria (gathering further information
separately if possible). If your fostering service is using a lot of different locations or media outlets to promote need, then ask enquirers exactly which advertisement they saw or heard, the newspaper they were reading or who they had been talking to (see chapter 5 for methods that work).
People rarely make a spur of the moment decision to foster so it is useful to hear how long it took them to enquire and what was their final motivation – this might be more of a personal one than anything your fostering service has done.
If this information has not been collected, assemble a small group of colleagues including foster carers to carry out a SWOT analysis of your recent foster carer recruitment activity. This will help gather anecdotal evidence from staff and identify areas where better
monitoring should be put in place as well as identify priorities for next steps and activity. SWOT is the acronym of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It is a simple technique used to review current procedures, plans or strategies and can help identify ways to solve problems and decide on next steps for a fostering service. A SWOT analysis for a fostering service’s recruitment strategy could look like this:
STRENGTHS
WEAKNESSES
• Dedicated post for the recruitment of
foster carers
• Competitive fees for foster carers • Active foster care association heavily
involved in recruitment activities
• Central office location • New promotional materials
• Relationship with local football club
supporting year round promotion
• Dedicated post is only part time – two
days per week initial enquiries cannot be taken
• Limited online presence with no
downloads or opportunities to upload films
• Shortages of qualified social workers to
carry out initial visits and allocate for assessment
OPPORTUNITIES
THREATS
• Fostering service currently undergoing
restructure
• Greater emphasis on outreach work with
community organisations and faith groups
• Elected member taking greater interest
in looked-after children and young people
• Five bordering local authorities all with
larger promotional budgets
• Reduction in promotional budget in
upcoming financial year
3. Make use of current foster carers
Meeting with current foster carers to identify their motivations to foster is hugely useful. Consider carrying out a focus group with current foster carers to find out about their experiences and consult on new approaches and methods. Establishing an advisory board of foster carers to input into developments and initiatives could be considered.
4. Find out why people chose not to foster for your service
Re-contacting people who have enquired in the last one to two years to find out about their experiences, why they chose not to progress with their application and whether they are still thinking of fostering can be very worthwhile. In 2006-07 the Fostering Network
surveyed over 800 people who had enquired but not proceeded and found that half of them were still thinking about fostering11.
It is difficult for people to realise that they could make a great foster carer if they do not understand what fostering is. Therefore it is important that fostering services find a way to communicate what the task is and who is needed to sign up. Going out and about and talking to people at arranged meetings with community groups or on the street can help you to find out if people are aware of the need for foster carers and what they do. You can use this information to identify whether a big promotional push has helped raised
awareness in a year or two’s time. Talking to people not involved in fostering and finding out what misconceptions they hold will help identify messages that need to be dispelled in your promotional materials.
5. Plan your marketing and set timescales
STEP ONE Review current branding and identity
Fostering services use a variety of methods to attract potential foster carers. These include advertisements in newspapers and magazines and on radio, the back of buses and billboards.
Many fostering services mount publicity campaigns, pitching stories about fostering to their local media. Some organise local events and celebrations of fostering and others join in larger campaigns such as the Fostering Network’s annual Foster Care Fortnight. Posters and leaflets may be distributed around the community and fostering service websites can offer more detailed information. Some fostering services build relationships within their community by working with faith groups or voluntary and community
organisations.
Word of mouth is a powerful method of foster carer recruitment 12.
Different methods of publicity have different strengths and weaknesses. A poster might be the best way to convey a bright, attractive image of the positive aspects of fostering, while an article in a newspaper could go into some of the complexities of, for example, caring for teenagers. It is crucial for publicity methods to be chosen as part of a coherent foster carer recruitment strategy and that thorough monitoring and evaluation should be carried out to judge each method’s effectiveness.
11 Clarke, H Managing Initial Enquiries to a Fostering Service (The Fostering Network, 2007)
12Delivering Foster Care (BAAF, 2000) and Improving Effectiveness in Foster Care Recruitment (The
Nearly all fostering
services (97 per cent)
had a plan for their
recruitment activity
in 2008-09.
You might need to consider updating your promotional materials. This can be a costly exercise. Fostering services tend to refresh their marketing materials every three years13.
STEP TWO Devise a marketing plan
This can be part of the overall recruitment strategy or a separate document that details how the fostering service will go about promoting its need for foster carers over the
coming 12 months. Some fostering services have
implemented plans for longer periods of time such as three years.
Promotional activities should be linked with plans to run information events and The Skills to Foster training courses, so interested people do not have to wait too long to move to the next step of becoming a foster carer. Based on previous years’ activities a fostering service should look at predicting numbers and ensuring that adequate resources are available to support people through the process (see chapter 6 for more details).
The money available to promote the need for foster carers varies tremendously between fostering services and it is important that you spread what you have to spend across the full 12 months. Joining in with national campaigns such as Foster Care Fortnight and
Shared Care Week can be cost effective ways to promote local need. Money should be allocated to activities which both raise the profile of fostering and also trigger people’s decision to contact the fostering service.
STEP THREE Develop links with organisations in the area
In addition to wide-spread promotion in a range of outlets, fostering services benefit from getting the message out to organisations in the area – their current foster carers will already be active members or have links with many. Taking the time to target community groups and setting up meetings with representatives from the following can be beneficial:
• Council’s information centres • Adult education centres • Children’s centres • Youth projects
• Voluntary and community organisations
• Faith groups and job centres (including recruitment fairs).
Offering to give presentations, provide information for newsletters or attend planned events can be effective ways to reach new audiences.
Some fostering services work collaboratively with neighbouring fostering services. Linking together for joint promotional pushes and being up front about particular shortages of foster families is useful, so you can signpost people to the right fostering service.
13 For examples of new promotional campaigns see Attracting and Keeping Carers available from
Putting effective systems in place
Advertising is likely to provide the first impression that potential foster carers have of a fostering service – and first impressions count. Studies show that those people who went on to become foster carers valued the quality of contact with the fostering service, the quality of the information they received and the quality of the staff14.
TOP TIP
Right from the start, fostering services should be thinking about what sort of impression they are aiming to give. After all people interested in fostering are thinking about whether a particular fostering service is one they would like to work for as much as the service is considering if they would make suitable applicants. Never forget that applicants have a choice and always assume that they have also made enquiries to another fostering service.
Any effective fostering service should have a means to measure their success and evaluate their achievements to help plan for future developments. This will assist in completing a full review of how initial enquiries are handled by the fostering service.
• Prompt response to enquiries
Review how calls and enquiries to your fostering service are handled. Some fostering services have a dedicated post or team to handle initial enquiries, allowing callers to be given more detail about the task and for more information about them to be collected. Where this is the case, fostering services found having such a post advantageous15.
• Popularity and regularity of information events
Planned and frequent events in convenient locations should be well attended assuming sufficient numbers of enquiries are generated in the first instance, and that events are well publicised and promoted.
• Number of initial visits
Regularly reviewing statistics could highlight the efficiency of the fostering service in
allocating staff time to the task – investigate if a very small number of the people you pass on receive an initial visit, such as only one in 10.
• Number of approvals
Keeping an eye on who is eventually approved and the approval status they are given will help identify whether specific shortages are being met. This could indicate certain messaging is not getting through to potential applicants and whether priorities such as finding families in a particular area or for a specific scheme are being achieved.
• Ratio of enquiries to approvals
As well as keeping an eye on the progress of people through the recruitment and assessment process, it is also important to notice when key drop off points are, such as following a
particular training module. Where possible the reasons for no longer proceeding with applications should be gathered.
14 Clarke, H Managing Initial Enquiries to a Fostering Service (The Fostering Network, 2007) 15 Ibid.
Identifying what works best
Fostering services need to build in systems and make available sufficient time to routinely monitor and evaluate progress and reflect on achievements and challenges. Monitoring is a continuous process and an important part of recruitment.
A fostering service should be clear from the outset about what they are planning to achieve, as outlined in the recruitment strategy. Evaluating the success of particular promotional activities will require utilising a range of tools and it is important to identify what worked in generating enquiries, both in terms of quantity and quality of applicant.
However, while gathering basic statistics on the number of enquirers and how they heard about fostering is important, it is only one way to keep on top of progress and only tells part of the story. Factoring in time to catch up with colleagues regularly and map progress is very important. What a fostering service really needs to be evaluating is if the quality of applicants improve, leading to fewer drop outs, if the length of service is extended and if the standard of care is maintained or improved. In addition, monitoring feedback from the placement team allows you to measure if the service is becoming better placed to meet the needs of children.
How do you compare with other fostering services?
Regularly reviewing successes and achievements is really important, but keeping an eye on what neighbouring fostering services are doing can also be useful. This can be done by looking out for advertisements and other promotional activities. Think about how what you are doing compares. This can be particularly important if they are offering a more comprehensive support package or announcing a rise in the fees for foster carers.
Establishing regular catch-up meetings with staff from neighbouring fostering services can also be an effective way to do this. It also gives the opportunity to plan events together, especially if you are recruiting in the same large urban area or border major towns and cities.
TOP TIP
A comparison of neighbouring local authorities and independent fostering providers could be undertaken to evaluate how the package of support offered to your foster carers compares to that offered by others. Keeping an eye on who is advertising where and what they are offering, as well as regularity of information sessions and preparation training events, is also advisable.
Nearly 80 per cent
of fostering services
have an annual
recruitment target.
4.
Finding the people who could foster
Fostering services need to look for a wide range of foster families, some of which are easier to identify and attract than others. Fostering services report particular difficulty in finding foster carers in sufficient numbers to look after teenagers or for more specialist schemes such as remand fostering, treatment foster care and fostering children with certain disabilities. Developing and maintaining a keen, active and skilled pool of foster carers is essential to the running of a quality fostering service. Sufficient vacancies are needed to offer placement choice, if fostering services are going to be able to place children in a family that is right for them.
Not all foster carers will be recruited in the same way, and a plan of how to identify who you need, where to look for them and how to assess and approve them needs to be put into place by every fostering service.
Annual recruitment target
It is essential for any fostering service to have an annual target for the recruitment of foster carers. Every recruitment strategy should have a clear annual target – this means not just the quantity but also the type of foster family needed to offer particular placements for children based on need, location and their previous experience. The fostering service should also ensure that there is capacity in the fostering team to recruit, train, assess and support the number of new foster families it has planned to recruit.
How do you identify a recruitment target?
A fostering service must always be realistic about the recruitment target that they identify. Recruitment targets are identified in a range of ways.
Achieving an overall picture of the fostering service and current use and vacancy levels of foster families can be tricky, as often the information is stored with a number of teams, individuals and so on. The more thorough a fostering service can be with the inclusion of a range of different colleagues to ask for input into the identification of a target the better.
Try arranging regular meetings (monthly or quarterly) to discuss progress with key staff such as the post responsible for recruitment, service manager, commissioning team and placements co-ordinator.
What information can be gathered?
Fostering services can gather information from a range of places. A comprehensive review of the way in which the service is running can help point towards a recruitment target.
Undertaking an audit that identifies type, profile and needs of looked-after children and young people is a good place to start. This can be used, together with profiles of existing foster carers, to identify gaps and priority areas for recruitment. Try identifying the following to provide useful information:
Statistics of looked-after children and young people
(last three to five years)
TOP TIP – compare figures available nationally/regionally
Identification of trends in the looked-after
population
Projection for future needs of the looked-after population
Identification of realistic recruitment target
(for coming 12 months to three years)
Gender Age
Category of need – abuse, neglect, disability, family dysfunction, socially unacceptable behaviour, absent parenting and so on
Ethnicity
Religion and other cultural needs
Type of foster care required and legal status
For example:
• Change in number of teenagers or number of children needing foster care from a particular minority ethnic group.
• Increase in number of under twos requiring emergency foster care.
• Identifying the type of foster placements that has been particularly difficult to find.
Consider national influences such as the rise in the number of children coming into care following high profile cases such as Baby Peter.
Review the use of foster families from other fostering services and how these could continue, be increased or reduced.
This should be more than just a total number of fostering households – finding foster families to be recruited for specific schemes will help influence recruitment activity.
1. Who are the children?
A realistic profile of the looked-after population allows you to identify certain trends and significant changes to the needs of the children and young people.
2. Who have you been able to successfully find in the past?
A breakdown of the pool of existing foster families, together with the identification of any gaps in availability of certain types of foster carers and priority areas for future
recruitment will help in identifying a recruitment target. For example, it is important to be clear which foster carers will be available in the coming year or two depending on the needs of a particular placement. When reviewing your current pool of foster carers consider:
Who your foster carers are
• Age • Gender
• Ethnicity and religion
• Qualifications and skills level • Relationship status
• Number and age of own children • Length of time fostering
• Employment status (and profession) prior to fostering
or at current time
• What attracted them to foster in the first place – did
they respond to a particular advert, was it suggested by a friend or were they already working in the children’s workforce?
• Current levels of satisfaction – gather feedback from
mentor or supervising social worker including number of placements in past one to three years and any current or recent vacancy levels
• Likely longevity of service – are long-term placements
coming to an end or are they likely to choose to retire soon?
Where they live • Postcode
• Type of property – owned, privately rented, housing
association
• Size of home – number of bedrooms and living space Approval status and
record of placements
Fostering services can sometimes approve fostering households for a wide range of placement types and it can be difficult to have a clear picture of the current pool using data kept on a central database.
Consider looking at placement histories for foster families, as well as talking to supervising social workers about issues raised in development plans and
opportunities to take on children and young people currently outside of their approval range.
Gathering all this information together should enable your fostering service to identify the gaps between your current pool of foster carers and the needs of looked-after children and young people, therefore helping to pinpoint target numbers and priority areas for recruitment.
3. Where might you find new foster carers?
It is important to identify where the greatest proportion of looked-after children and young people come from – focusing recruitment in these areas will help maintain links with the looked-after children’s family, friends and school. You should look at this in conjunction with:
• Identifying the demographics of an area for focused activity – profiling the population
including minority ethnic population, household composition and size, economic activity (occupation and main industries).
• Identifying where your fostering service has been most successful at recruiting foster
carers in the past. It is likely that certain streets, areas or towns are more receptive to the idea of fostering than others – try to find out why that is the case.
• Using your plotting of where your foster carers live on your local area map to find out
what opportunities there are to promote fostering in that area – through the media, running information sessions in the locality or linking in with local businesses, community organisations and faith groups.
Does your fostering service have the capacity to recruit new foster carers?
When setting a target for the recruitment of foster carers it is essential that a number of key factors are considered to confirm whether it is realistic for your fostering service. These include:Availability of staff
• Ensure that there is a member of staff or a team available to promote the need for new
foster carers and lead on recruitment.
• Ensure staff are available to handle initial enquiries, as well as social workers and
foster carers to train and assess new foster families based on projections for recruitment levels.
• Factor in staff time to keep in touch with prospective foster carers.
• Do not forget to ensure sufficient staffing to provide new foster families with adequate
support once they have started fostering.
Adequate funding
• Identify the budget available for all promotional activities.
• Ensure that funding is allocated to cover all costs of the recruitment process, including
training, panel and staffing costs.
• Find out from other fostering services what works, together with what attracted your
current foster carers to your fostering service. Having a good knowledge of successful recruitment activities and researching and planning future promotional methods will help your fostering service be more cost effective.
Proven success
• It is essential that a thorough system for monitoring and evaluating all aspects of
recruitment activity is incorporated into the recruitment strategy. Feedback from previous activities will identify which methods have been more successful.
• Consider consulting other fostering services to find out about their past successes and
5.
Promoting foster care
The majority of foster carers (two-thirds) take a year or more to think about fostering before contacting a particular fostering service16. Foster care is not an ‘off the page sell’. While many
people respond to an advertisement, it is more likely that this only represented the ‘tipping point’ which made them contact a particular fostering service for the first time. It remains true to say that people respond to a constant reminder of the need for foster carers, described by those working in the sector as the ‘drip, drip effect’.
What methods work best?
17Word of mouth
At the heart of many fostering services’ recruitment successes is the role that current and past foster carers play in encouraging new people to come forward. Word of mouth has long been recognised as the most effective recruitment tool. This is, however, only successful if foster carers are well treated by their fostering service and hence want to share their enthusiasm for the role.
As well as encouraging foster carers to promote the need for new families, fostering services should seek inspiring stories to gain coverage in the local and regional press. Providing foster carers for interviews in the media offers a good deal of reassurance to people thinking about fostering, as well as providing a real insight into what it is really like. This could also be achieved through advertisements, though of course this has higher cost implications.
Helping foster carers spread the word
Foster carers are naturally very good communicators. They also tend to be very active in their community, particularly around and working with children and young people. Fostering services can support their foster carers to help them spread the word. Methods utilised do not have to be expensive; consider implementing some or all of the following:
• Keeping foster carers up to date with recruitment needs. • Providing foster carers with the latest promotional materials.
• Including details of information sessions in fostering services newsletters.
• Encouraging foster carers to hold informal information sessions in their homes or at
community organisations and faith groups with which they are involved.
• Providing an incentive for recruiting friends, colleagues, family and neighbours. • Supporting them to share their story in the media.
Engaging the media
Local and regional press is an ideal way to gain free coverage about the need for foster carers. Although fostering services spend a significant proportion of their annual budget for promotional activities on advertising in the media, there are a number of opportunities for gaining free
coverage, such as:
16 Clarke, H Managing Initial Enquiries to a Fostering Service (The Fostering Network, 2007)
17 The following were identified by representatives from fostering service attending a one-day workshop
• Issuing a press release calling for more foster carers. Strong statements and lots of facts and
figures will help get reporters interested.
• Encouraging a reporter to look at a fostering issue in more detail. Finding great case studies
of foster carers or care experienced young people will be essential to bring the story to life.
• Offering a comment piece or writing a letter to the editor explaining why more foster carers
are needed.
• Organising events for potential foster carers or to celebrate current foster families, telling the
media in advance and inviting reporters and photographers.
• Linking in with national events such as Foster Care Fortnight or a story in the press about a
fostering related issue such as the rise of children coming into care.
Searching online
70 per cent18 of households in the UK have home internet access. Increasingly potential foster
carers are searching for information online about how they can start fostering in their local area. It is really important that they can access detailed and helpful information easily from your website, in order to encourage them to choose to foster for you.
Check that all relevant information is available and up to date, and that links from other websites to yours are working. Spicing up content with plenty of images, downloads of leaflets and
information as well as uploading films can make a real difference.
Blogs can be a good way to share information. A blog from a foster carer talking about their day-to-day life will give people a real insight into the job. A foster carer should write it themselves (as this works best) rather than a marketing or press officer. Obviously foster carers will have to be mindful of confidentiality issues and be careful not to identify or share sensitive information – as they are in carrying out their role.
A number of fostering services are now paying for search engine ads, such as Google. Payment is per click so can be very cost effective. Facebook also provides advertising opportunities and will allow targeting of specific audiences based on age, gender, relationship status and geographical area. The cost of these ads is also based on “click throughs”.
Continually spreading the word
Where funding permits, fostering services should try and ensure a year round call for new foster families. This can be achieved by planning monthly advertisements, quarterly PR activities and regular information sessions, which can be promoted for free in the local press or through effective links with community organisations.
Advertising in local media
Planning a co-ordinated approach to advertising in a range of media can be very effective, but costly. As well as generic advertising some fostering services advertise their need for a particular child (usually anonymised) who needs long-term foster carers.
A third of fostering services
promoted their need for foster
carers alongside other roles in
the children’s workforce
in 2008-09.
Outdoor advertising
There are a number of different ways that fostering services can utilise outdoor advertising to make a big promotional splash for fostering. Branded buses, taxis and vans have toured the countryside and busy city streets, and banners and huge billboards have been put up. This can be a very effective way to get your message out there and could start people thinking about fostering for the first time.
Direct marketing
Direct mail is the best known and most common form of direct marketing. Sending a postcard, letter or another promotional item directly to potential foster carers can be a very effective way of getting people’s attention and enables your fostering service to spread clear messages to
identified groups of people, such as those living in suitably sized properties or on a postcode basis.
Direct marketing makes it simple to quantify the success of your activity, as long as responses to your campaign are recorded and monitored. This should be integrated into the information requested from people at the time of their initial enquiries, either over the telephone or on an online form requesting further information. The literature distributed to them could also include an expression of interest form which will be easy to record when posted back to your fostering service19.
Employment advertising
Recently fostering services have begun to make use of advertising in the employment sections of papers and magazines, as well as online. This can be particularly worthwhile when seeking foster carers for a specialist scheme requiring specific skills and experience which might only be found in people already working in the children’s workforce.
Fostering services should also look at opportunities to promote their need for foster carers alongside advertisements for other members of the team.
Community links and outreach work
For those fostering services experiencing shortages or having particular difficulty reaching people from certain minority ethnic groups, it can be worthwhile investing in the time to do outreach work or creating a dedicated post. Staff and foster carers can go out and talk to community groups about fostering and look at opportunities to speak at events or run fostering information events.
Specialist newsletters or community organisation websites can be a really good way to get your message out to target groups. Your current foster carers could offer suggestions of ones that they read or access and even offer to be profiled in a special feature about fostering.
19 For further information on this see the information sheet Direct Marketing, available from