Foster care branding creative and strategy agency

"It's been great working with Eleven to develop our foster carer recruitment campaign. Eleven ran workshops with our fostering team and our existing foster carers, and used the insight from these sessions to develop our marketing strategy and creative approach.

We've had really positive feedback from our foster carers about the new recruitment campaign: it resonates strongly with the target audience and delivers exactly the emotional connection we wanted to achieve. I definitely recommend Eleven for their strategic and creative approach."

Head of Strategic Communications
Dorset Council

Brand development and specialist foster carer recruitment for local authority fostering services.

With the number of children coming into care rising and local authorities receiving fewer enquiries and applications from potential foster carers, we understand the mounting pressures that fostering services are under. There simply aren’t enough people ready and willing to be foster carers in the current climate and this needs to change.

Local authorities are also facing increasing challenges when it comes to securing and retaining enough foster carers for children and young people coming into care. And because placements made through an independent fostering agency are significantly more expensive than those the council can make directly, effective foster carer recruitment is needed now more than ever to help fostering services make savings without impacting the quality of their service.

As foster carer marketing specialists, having worked with local authorities across the country to strengthen their brand positioning and recruit new foster carers, we recognise that a long-term approach to foster carer recruitment is needed to build an audience of prospective foster carers for the future.

Our approach

We’ve worked on several wide-reaching projects to directly address the challenges fostering services face. We’ve explored the latest behavioural insights, spoken to target audiences and applied our creativity to devise fresh new marketing strategies – all to help you adopt a more innovative approach to recruiting foster carers.

Our collaborative and hands-on approach means we’ve also got first-hand experience of the fostering sector, having worked directly with service users and carried out site visits. We’ve also worked directly with foster carers, enabling us to create content that speaks the same language as your target audience.

We also understand that foster care has suffered a negative image over the years, and many foster carer recruitment campaigns have devalued and trivialised the role. We can provide you with a bespoke campaign that is authentic in messaging, busts some of the common myths and attracts a diverse range of new potential carers.

Since the government announced its £27 million investment into a Fostering Recruitment and Retention Programme last September, we've been considering how we can make the hotly-awaited regional campaign toolkit work for our clients. We can work with you to tailor the design toolkit to the needs of your local council's fostering service, both geographically and in terms of your individual service needs. This involves supporting you with messaging, creative application and strategic approach.

Whether you’re looking to run a campaign to recruit more foster carers, communicate better with your existing carers or elevate your fostering service’s online presence, we’ve got all the right experience and tools in our toolbox to help you achieve your goals.

Head of Strategic Communications
Dorset Council