- Title
- Fostering NSW recruitment program: final evaluation report: June 2014 - December 2017
- Creator
- Foote, Wendy; Broady, Sharon; Potten, Liz; Sanderson, Savita
- Publisher
- Association of Children's Welfare Agencies (ACWA)
- Resource Type
- report
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- In 2012, the Fostering NSW foster care recruitment program was auspiced by the peak body Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies (ACWA), in order to recruit foster carers for organisations in NSW that provided out of home care. The program was funded by the NSW Department of Family and Community Services (FACS). The transfer of the brand and program to an NGO was a ‘first’, the department previously undertaking this role. This evaluation covers the period of 2014-2017. An earlier evaluation was undertaken for the period 2012 – 2013. The intent of this program was to manage a state wide campaign for the recruitment of foster carers; increase the number of inquiries to Fostering NSW website, and for the program to refer enquirers to accredited agencies who would then assess, train and authorise new carers. The main strategies used by the program was a reliance on public relations and social media. Possible the first of its kind in the world, the program relied on a mixture of public relations and social media. The Fostering NSW Facebook community formed around discussions about fostering, reached 41,000 members by the end of the program. ACWA adopted the strategy of an ongoing multimedia campaign with ‘bursts’ of paid advertising. Using this strategy, the Fostering NSW program was largely successful in a achieving its key objectives of: Raising awareness about the need for foster carers. ; Creating positive social norms around fostering. ; Increasing visits to the Fostering NSW website and enquiry line. ; Increasing the number of applications to become a carer and ultimately, the number of authorised carers. ; Strengthening the non-government agencies’ capacity to recruit, authorise and retain carers. In the 5 years of the program between May 2013 and May 2018, there were 549,784 visits to the Fostering NSW website – an average of 9,163 per month and trending upwards over time. 11,030 online and telephone enquiries about becoming a foster carer were received and 4,980 of these were referred or passed on to service providers as ‘warm leads’ for follow up. As with website visits, data collected on the number of enquiries and referrals handled by Fostering NSW shows a steady increase year-on-year as awareness and audience penetration grew. Data collected by the Office of the Children’s Guardian for the NSW Carers Register introduced in 2016 shows that the number of authorised carers increased by 1,674 between June 2016 and June 2017 but only by another 163 between June 2017 and June 2018. This drop in the previous pattern of increasing authorisations over the last year is discussed and thought to be related to a number of significant environmental changes including the commencement of a procurement cycle for the sector.
- Subject
- foster care; recruitment; report; Family and Community Services (FaCS)
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1399448
- Identifier
- uon:34603
- Rights
- This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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