Recruiting Foster Parents in NYC

April 1, 2005
Common Ground
by Daniel Stein, MPPM

Since 2001, True Insight Marketing has been working with The New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) to improve the recruitment and retention of foster parents. Achieving this goal would be a daunting task in any system, no less within New York City. Our work has been concentrated in four areas: Business Process Improvement, Community Engagement, Branding, Marketing and Communications and Leadership and Development. The good news is that we learned a tremendous amount which has yielded positive and measurable results. The bad news is that I only have room to share some of it with you in this article.

I have chosen to focus on the marketing research because of the powerful potential that this information can contribute to fundamentally changing awareness, attitudes and behaviors. I believe this information can be useful and applicable for individuals and organizations that are responsible for recruiting, supporting and retaining foster parents.

It all starts with knowing your audience

If you were to ask people living in New York City's highest needs communities what they think about the quality of our local foster care system, what answer would you expect? If you are like most people in the field, you would probably assume an overwhelmingly negative response, and expect to hear that the system is broken, right? Wrong!

When we researched this and other questions we were surprised (and delighted) to learn, that contrary to popular belief, people in New York's high needs communities are more positive, interested and knowledgeable than anyone anticipated. This new learning is significant and has been critically important in the development of the core messages that we've embedded in our materials. If it is everyone's job to recruit new families, then we need consensus around what we are saying and how we are saying it so we don't send the wrong messages.

"Today's Foster Care" Campaign: An Integrated Marketing Approach

The campaign had four key objectives: First, increase recruitment of new families to care for the types of children coming into care today, in the communities where they live. Second, encourage retention of current foster parents by acknowledging and reinforcing their important contributions. Third, begin to create more linkages between the contracted foster care agencies, the community and ACS. (More than 95% of the children are cared for by nonprofit agencies that have contracts with ACS.) Fourth, create a baseline to track and measure results over time.

It is important to mention that The Today's Foster Care advertising campaign was only one part of the multilayered program that also included community outreach, campaign material distribution, agency collaboration and training for recruiters in subjects like customer service and marketing fundamentals.

When most people think of marketing or advertising they think of those funny, witty, or aspirational commercials we see on TV, hear on the radio, or read in print ads. What the average person might not realize is that it can take a year or more to research, design and craft a message that clearly articulates the real benefits, attributes and 'unique selling points' for a specific target audience. Given the high cost, overwhelming media clutter and complexity associated with advertising it was critical that our message capture the attention of prospective foster parents, while not alienating current foster parents, birth parents and youth.

As we started working, we quickly discovered that fundamental 'consumer' information didn't exist for child welfare in general, and specifically not for New York City. So, we designed and executed a research plan that began with a series of focus groups to test various advertising concepts and gather qualitative insights about the current issues and opportunities within and among our target populations. We then implemented in depth phone surveys among 800 prospective and current foster parents. We gathered quantitative data to build a baseline of perceptions associated with foster care, the child welfare system, licensing requirements, and socio-demographics to measure our marketing program.

Let the Data Speak

So, what did people think about the quality of New York's foster care system? Without getting into the technical or statistical data we learned a lot and here are a few of the key findings: 1) A majority of prospective foster parents, (58%) believed the system was doing a good/very good job. 2) Nearly all of the current foster parents (95%) were satisfied with their experience being a foster parent. 3) Most people were familiar with most of the requirements to become licensed. 4) Only 25% knew or guessed the actual number of children that were in foster care. 5) Most interesting and surprising was that nearly 25% of prospects said they were interested in becoming foster parents themselves!

We took all of the relevant information and ran it through a sophisticated statistical regression analysis to figure out what was the most important information to include in our communications. The statistical modeling predicted that there were four factors that when combined would have the most influence on people's consideration about becoming a foster parent:

• People want to join a winning team (People want to know the system of care is healthy, stable, and provides appropriate support)
• They are motivated by the magnitude of the problem (The absolute number of children in foster care in their community makes the issue personal and close to home)
• People want to know they can help a specific child, right now
• People feel that they have what it takes to make a difference (They might not have a lot of money, a big house, or higher education but, they can provide a safe, stable, caring home)

We also confirmed that people who are already acquainted with foster parents were more likely to be interested in becoming foster parents themselves. Socio-economic, education or employment factors had little predictive importance.

In Market Results Validate Research Predictions

So, was the research right? Absolutely! The campaign has been highly effective in helping to achieve our goals. In fact, during the ten years that I worked in marketing at Kraft Foods I never saw a campaign that was as effective in such a short period of time.

We measured results in several ways. First, we tracked call volume which increased 63% during the initial five week flight of media (and 25% over the first year) compared to the prior 12 month average. These calls were disproportionately concentrated in the targeted high needs communities, which had received more media and marketing support.

After the first media flight, we conducted follow-up research and confirmed that our messages were understood and resonated well with our target audience. The most striking finding was that the campaign (statistically) improved people's awareness and attitudes towards foster care and the child welfare system.

Finally, we measured new certifications associated with campaign related inquiries and have documented an 18% increase versus the prior year period. (We measured new certifications beginning 9 months after the initial media flight, since we know it takes approximately that amount of time to complete the process).

Information you can use in your recruitment and communications efforts

Because the quantitative data is specific to New York City I can't guarantee that the findings are applicable to other locations. However, based on our work across the country over the past 7 years, I strongly believe that many of the core messages are transferable to other markets. (We expect to learn more from this year's National Foster Care Month campaign. True Insight is coordinating the national publicity campaign using similar messages to the New York campaign).

The first application is that the potential foster parent pool could be much larger than anyone thinks. Successfully reaching even a small percentage of people with 'latent' interest would significantly increase the pool of potential foster parents. (Remember that 25% of people surveyed in NY said they had interest in becoming foster parents).

Second, by combining several select message points it is possible to increase the power of your communications. These message points should include: the existence of positive attitudes toward foster care and the child welfare system, high satisfaction levels of current foster parents, the specific magnitude of the problem locally and the opportunity for regular people to use their innate helping assets to make a difference in a child's life.

Third, targeted marketing programs can be effective for stimulating interest, changing attitudes and generating new certified homes. These programs can also provide a positive halo for your organization's other initiatives. For public systems, it provides an opportunity to begin proactive discussions with the people in the communities where foster homes are needed most.

My hope is that in the near future, the field of child welfare can definitively provide the answers to some of these fundamental questions about our 'customers'. If the whole system really depends on good foster parents, we need to use all the tools available to recruit, support and retain them.