In early 2023, Avoq partnered with the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute and the Children’s Bureau to help bolster child welfare professional recruitment across the nation.
Following record low retention rates, our main assignment was to increase interest and understanding of the child welfare profession both for professional recruits and those within the profession. We met this task by developing a comprehensive campaign that allows child welfare professional recruitment departments nationwide to engage with and personalize the campaign assets to enhance their recruitment strategy.
The assignment was challenging, with some of the public perception around the industry informed by real, historically negative relationships with the profession. After conducting focus groups, we learned more about the need for the campaign to be an honest portrayal of the difficult nature of a child welfare career, while attracting those with the characteristics to thrive in the profession and make a difference within the industry and the families they support.
Through an extensive and research-informed creative concepting process, we landed on the Work with Purpose campaign tagline to drive qualified recruits’ interest. The idea behind the campaign was to highlight a theme we heard throughout our conversations with those close to the profession: This is not a career field for those looking for the most competitive salaries or recognition as other careers. Rather, it is one for those truly looking for a rewarding career – those who want to work with purpose.
Because of the sensitivities involved in the project and the history of child welfare, we prioritized getting to know the profession and its history deeply. As such, we conducted a research analysis to understand the child welfare profession, its public perception and the current recruitment landscape. We also spoke to those within the profession and with lived experience, including NCWWI advisory board members, Children’s Bureau representatives, former caseworkers and agency leads, to gain further insight.
What ended up surprising us most about this project was just how connected to the work each of us would end up being after these conversations. Hearing the firsthand experiences – which ranged from inspiring themes of success observed over years of case involvement to newer strategies in place to enhance the profession’s support for families/professionals alike – helped us realize the change already taking place and our opportunity to be a part of this impact.
After these conversations, we identified key target personas that could fill the needs most evident in the growing child welfare professional recruitment challenge. We then concepted and tested 2-3 creative campaign directions based on preliminary findings, using focus groups that match key personas to gather feedback on the concepts.
The feedback from the groups was incredibly helpful and raw, often pointing to sensitivities we had not considered in full. But one campaign – Work with Purpose – stood out. Child welfare professionals from recruiters to caseworkers stated they felt the campaign presented an accurate yet hopeful portrayal of the profession. Similarly, the target recruits in the groups felt drawn to the career and the purpose-driven qualities successful child welfare professionals have.
Ready to move forward with Work With Purpose, we launched a targeted paid media test program with initial assets to gain insights on the efficacy of the campaign direction and to draw learnings that would inform final campaign assets. With the results in hand, we finalized the research informed campaign assets in a campaign toolkit that supports child welfare recruitment from local agencies to statewide programs to tribal nations and launched it online alongside an informative microsite.
The campaign toolkit, which includes set of ads (print to digital), was incredibly important to the client and us. Making the campaign strategy accessible to departments that could benefit most from the materials, the toolkit allows agencies the option to take the campaign and make it work for them, with the flexibility to add their own logos to the assets and pick the tools that match their recruitment needs.
As a final part of the NCWWI team’s distribution strategy, they hosted profession-wide webinars on how to use the recruitment materials. Our team joined one of these and were thrilled at the response. Through dozens of comments and personal anecdotes about how the campaign speaks to the progress and reality of the profession, it became clear to us the true impact the campaign had to the professionals and that it will continue to have to the profession and the families it supports.
The test campaign numbers were promising, informing us early on that the work had strong potential for success. In fact, in just a 30-day campaign period with a limited spend, the paid recruitment campaign drew 15 million impressions. Further, the paid campaign led to increased applications and website traffic, including 35 qualified resume submissions in a 15-day period and 12,000+ website visitors for a separate test program site in a 30-day period.*
While the numbers were telling in seeing our success, what really qualified the impact of our efforts was the personal anecdotes from the child welfare professional recruitment community. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from child welfare professionals during webinars, sharing words of excitement about having research-informed, comprehensive recruitment assets.
Perhaps the most close to home reference of our efforts being a success was a colleague of ours seeing the recruitment ads in use from the nearby Fairfax County Government page just a few weeks after we delivered the final assets.
*Day period ranges based off program site. Some were 15 days, some were 30. This was based off program support availability.
