Excellence in Communications
HSE and IFCA win Award for Excellence in Communications for Focus on Fostering campaign
The HSE in conjunction with the Irish Foster Care Association won best Public Information campaign award at the Public Relations Consultants' Excellence in Public Relations Awards 2009 for its Focus of Fostering Week campaign which ran in November last year. It is the first time that the HSE has entered these awards.
In awarding the HSE, the PRCA said, "This was a very well presented category and given the number of entries, the judges found it extremely difficult to make their selection. The Public Information campaign category winner is a communications programme which needed to engage and mobilise people into action. The ambitious objectives also had to be reached within a challenging budget. "Sensitive message execution", "engagement about the issue with the widest possible community" and the "potential for long lasting effect in society" are some of the features commended by the judges. And the striking communications and clear results spoke for themselves. There has been a strong rise in interest and recruitment of prospective foster parents since last November."
The awards ceremony took place on Friday 26th June at the Conrad Hotel at which Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan TD was guest of honour. The HSE's campaign was the only one of the four short listed entries in the category which did not use the services of a public relations firm and beat off stiff competition from campaigns such as one PR company's management of the Irish Dioxin Crisis for the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.
Judges of the PRCA awards included communications experts such as John Gallagher, Course Director, MA in Public Relations, DIT, Brian O'Mahony Chief Business Correspondent, Irish Examiner, Barry Kenny, Corporate Communications Manager, Iarnród Éireann and Tara Buckley Director General, RGDATA to name but a few.
On winning the PRCA award, Fidelma Browne, Head of Public Information, HSE said, "Focus on Fostering was one of our most successful public information campaigns last year, and shows what we can achieve using our own resources and the strong support of both the Irish Foster Care Association and our own HSE colleagues. Fostering Teams across the country participated in the planning and the execution of this campaign, and we were thrilled with the response from the public and the increase in enquiries about becoming a foster parent - a job which really can change the life of a child. We are delighted to win an award on our first entry and thank the judging panel for acknowledging the success and fantastic results of the Focus on Fostering campaign.
The HSE and IFCA joined forces in November 2008 to promote ‘Focus on Fostering Week' and raise awareness of fostering, thereby assisting HSE Fostering Teams in their efforts to recruit foster carers. This was the first time that both organisations officially teamed up to launch Focus on Fostering week resulting in an integrated approach and pooling of resources to promote the benefits of fostering. This joint campaign was one of a range of outputs from many years of conjoint working between the HSE and important stakeholder organisations such as IFCA. The aim of the campaign, entitled ‘Could you give a child a chance?' was to raise awareness of fostering and to assist HSE Local Health Offices in recruiting foster carers.
The primary aim of the programme was to highlight the wonderful work done by foster parents in Ireland and create public awareness on what fostering is and who can foster children in order to recruit new foster parents in those areas where they are needed. The key messages were to tell the public and prospective foster parents that fostering is a service for children who cannot live with their own family, that anyone can become a foster parent, explain criteria and processes and demonstrate the benefits for foster children and foster parents.
As a result of the HSE's PR campaign, there was a significant increase in enquiries to Local Health Offices from prospective foster parents, and a larger than average conversion of expressions of interest into actual applications, a large increase in hits to the fostering pages of http://www.hse.ie/ from people specifically looking for information on fostering and the RTE soap, Fair City, is currently running a storyline about fostering as a result of the publicity created around Focus on Fostering Week.