Recruiting for Excellence in Foster Care: Marrying Child Welfare Research With Brand Marketing Strategies
editThis project was developed to better understand the characteristics and behaviors of high-quality foster parents in order to inform a marketing strategy designed to “brand” high-quality care and create a recruiting campaign based upon the new foster parent “brand.” Focus groups were conducted with high-quality foster parents in six counties in a large Western state. Six unifying themes were uncovered which described the characteristics of high-quality foster parents. Behaviors exhibited by excellent foster parents were also distilled into six areas. Working with a branding team, a new strategy was developed to recruit and retain excellent foster parents. The marriage between the world of business advertising and the world of social work described here suggests the potential for similar strategies in the future.