Kibble Education and Care Centre is an Early Adopter of the Each and Every Child toolkit, working closely with Each and Every Child team on how to embed the framing recommendations within their foster carer recruitment campaign. Each and Every Child is working intensively with Kibble to deliver sessions that allow staff to explore how framing can be used in their roles to affect positive change for children and young people who have experience of care. Here Hazel Darragh, Senior Communications Officer at Kibble Education and Care Centre, talks about what they have learned so far:
‘Kibble is privileged to be working alongside Each and Every Child on the delivery of our foster carer recruitment campaign. With the research, knowledge and experience of The FrameWorks Institute and the Each and Every Child Initiative, we are incredibly excited about what we can collectively achieve as we seek to empower children and young people with experience of care, and encourage people in our community to consider a rewarding role in fostering.
When we first learned about the work of Each and Every Child, we were extremely keen to see how we could get involved as an early adopter, helping to change the narrative around children and young people involved in the care system. After all, this was very much aligned to the work we were doing as part of The Promise to drive systemic change in line with the outcomes of the Independent Care Review. From our first meeting with Claire, Michael and Tamsyn we knew this was going to be a great opportunity and whilst we had the right basis for our foster carer campaign in terms of real, genuine voices of foster carers and young people, we saw how we could take this a step further and leverage the power of the community to help us meet our goal. For us, this was welcoming ‘extraordinary, ordinary’ people, with a range of life experiences and from a variety of backgrounds, that would show children and young people the love, stability and happiness they deserve. People that celebrate the children for all that they are, nurture and encourage their wonderful personalities and open opportunities both now and in the future.
With our fostering service being part of the wider Kibble group, where all services are integrated and shaped around the needs of young people, further meetings were set up with senior managers across Kibble with a view to disseminating these learnings across the organisation. This would be initiated within the fostering service, prior to being rolled out to other services.
From our meetings with Each and Every Child so far, we have learned that framing a message in a particular way can significantly change how people think, feel and act. This was evidenced by research that showed attitudinal changes based on how a question was presented. In addition, we learned just how important the framing of language is if we are to reduce the stigma surrounding young people with experience of care. Our research and findings from previous campaigns helped us shape this year’s positive campaign, and we were grateful for Each and Every Child to acknowledge the campaign’s strengths, however there is always scope for improvement. Among the advice that Each and Every Child presented is that we should avoid highlighting long-held societal misperceptions of what a foster carer looks like. In doing so, we inadvertently emphasise these misconceptions further. Instead, we should turn this around and explain the diverse number of people who are stepping up to take on this valuable role. In addition, they suggested that we enhance our community ties to tell the story of shared responsibility within our community. This is something we do every day at Kibble, ensuring young people are actively engaged in community groups, projects and activities, however we don’t always vocalise this enough’.
As we progress our foster carer campaign, with the invaluable support of Each and Every Child, we are incredibly optimistic about what we can go on to. The team at Each and Every Child share our determination and enthusiasm to drive change within the system and help make Scotland the best place to grow up. We feel both humbled and privileged that we get the opportunity to share our knowledge and insights with the sector as part of our commitment to #KeepThePromise.
Tamsyn Hyatt, FrameWorks’ Principal Communications Strategist and Each and Every Child’s framing expert, said:
‘It’s been fantastic to work alongside Hazel and her team. We’re in the early stages: sharing insight from our research, framing practice, and creative communications. Our last session focused on the opportunities we have – and challenges we face – when framing a fostering recruitment campaign.
From this session, the take-away learning was to:
- Make the positive case for fostering – and only our positive case
- Lean in to strengthening our community ties
- Place foster carers’ stories in context
- Dial down the focus on unique characteristics (and make this about what all children need to thrive); and
- If possible, rethink our approach to images.
We’re confident that together we can create a fostering campaign that builds on all of Kibble’s – and Hazel’s – great work. And one that brings our framing insights to life.’
For more information on how you can embed framing, explore the Each and Every Child toolkit.
Recent Comments