Strategic Communications
Better and more regular coverage of the child welfare system will require agencies, foster families, neighborhood organizations, and the media to change their approaches to the issue. Too often, news coverage is based on tragedy and crisis - a child dies or children are found in miserable conditions. At the same time, lawmakers and elected officials demand relaxed confidentiality rules, so that agencies are in a quandary about how best to work with the news media.
Media can be important partners in reform efforts. Public affairs and outreach programs can provide links to other businesses and get the Family to Family message out to a broader, but targeted, audience.
What is "Strategic Communications and Media Relations for Child Welfare"?
This tool includes dozens of tips and ideas on the following activities:
- Strategic planning and implementation from start to finish;
- Working with Families Working with the Media - a guide for agency directors, caseworkers, and public information officers who regularly work with the media and are often asked to find children and families for press interviews;
- Understanding public opinion and the results of focus groups conducted across the country on what people think about child welfare and foster care;
- Developing written materials, press and information kits, brochures, videos, and presentations that an agency can be proud of and that are done with limited resources;
- Investing in new ways to "market" a child welfare agency to recruit foster and adoption parents through child-specific materials, and to build morale among agency staff;
- Cultivating personal relationships with reporters, editorial page editors, news directors, and those in charge of public service announcements;
- Writing and placing op-eds and opinion pieces and otherwise getting the agency message out to the public; and
- Making the media a constructive force in the child welfare system.
How was this tool applied in Family to Family?
Sites have been working towards communi-cations goals that include:
- Strategic cultivation of media to advance the new ideas in Family to Family;
- Development and implementation of a communications plan that promotes a policy agenda for reform;
- Support from the public and policymakers for reforms in the foster care system in local communities; and
- Procedures and planning for crisis communications within the child welfare agency.
What did we learn from these applications?
The best media relations are neither auto-matic nor accidental but result from planned, targeted, and continuous attention from every agency employee. Agency leaders need to plan in advance, with full staff involvement, for dealing with the media during an agency crisis. By cultivating personal relationships with interested reporters, an agency can use the media to advance many of its own goals - public awareness of the need for foster/adoptive parents and support for the agency's work and policy initiatives.
What you need to get started:
A meeting of all agency leaders and personnel should discuss and agree upon the level of importance of media relations, and then upon the resources that should go into it. This tool can guide the meeting and direct further action.
What you need for full implementation:
Commitment from agency leaders in terms of time and resources is the most crucial element in building an effective media strategy. The tool and consultants below can offer time-tested advice, but every agency member needs to embrace the concepts of media courtship if the techniques are to prove useful.
How to find out more:
resources, examples, references:
Contact Kathy Bonk at the Communications Consortium Media Center (CCMC) at 202.326.6767, a nonprofit group based in Washington, D.C. that specializes in developing communications strategies for policy change. CCMC has extensive experience working with child welfare agencies across the country on the issues outlined in this tool. Copies of the complete tool are available through the Annie E. Casey Foundation at 410.547.6600.