CASE STUDY

Children’s Home Recruitment

How PLMR Genesis produced a strategic recruitment campaign to address critical staffing shortages in its children’s homes. By focusing on impactful messaging and targeted digital outreach, the campaign aimed to attract compassionate individuals committed to providing high-quality
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ECC

Client

Children's Home Recruitment

Sector

Social Care

Healthcare

Services provided

Digital Marketing

I need someone to listen

The Situation

Essex County Council’s children’s homes in Harlow (Maples) and Colchester (New Farm Road) urgently needed staff to fill 44 vacancies, including residential workers, night workers, and advanced skills workers. These roles were vital to the success of the council’s residential care provision and offered fully funded training through the Essex Social Care Academy (ESCA). 

Barriers to recruitment included: 

  • Misconceptions about children’s social care as a career. 
  • Concerns about low pay and demanding work hours. 
  • Lack of qualifications and limited career-change support. 

The council offered a compelling value proposition: 

  • The chance to build meaningful relationships with young people. 
  • Opportunities for funded training and career progression. 
  • A rewarding sense of community contribution. 

What we did

To tackle the recruitment challenge, we employed a targeted, multi-channel digital advertising strategy across Meta, Google Display, and LinkedIn. The campaign emphasised clear, inspiring messaging and focused on reaching specific audience groups, including altruists, career changers, students, and employees. 

Key actions included: 

  1. Targeted Messaging and Content Creation: We developed compelling messages highlighting the meaningful impact of the roles, funded training programs, and career progression opportunities. Engaging messaging like “Recruitment Has Begun” and “Helping Young People” resonated strongly with target audiences. 
  2. Digital Channel Optimisation: Meta received the largest share of the budget due to its advanced targeting and proven reach and engagement rates. Google Display retargeted users based on geographic data, emphasising the areas of Colchester and Harlow. LinkedIn targeted professionals in related sectors such as healthcare and education. 
  3. Audience Engagement Through Emotional Storytelling: We focused on aspirational content to motivate those already inclined to care for others or seeking fulfilling careers. To engaged the target audience we used testimonials and meaningful examples of the positive impact they could have. 
  4. Flexible Campaign Structure: To ensure optimal performance we provided regular updates and optimised ad content based on performance data. This allowed consistent alignment with audience needs and recruitment goals. 

The Result

For the three months the campaign ran for, we saw impressive outcomes including 1.37 million impressions and 17,073 clicks from the ads to the website. 

By utilising Google Display, we were able to report on geographic performance which was extremely important for this campaign due to location of the vacancies. Colchester emerged as the most engaged location, generating 900 clicks. Whilst we noted smaller and more rural locations still saw high engagement rates, demonstrating localised success. 

The Children’s Home Recruitment Campaign effectively raised awareness about the benefits of working in children’s homes and inspired diverse candidates to apply. Through targeted messaging and strategic use of digital platforms, we successfully mitigated the recruitment challenge and built a foundation for future workforce development. 

By combining innovative digital strategies with a human-centric approach, the campaign reinforced the council’s commitment to supporting children and families in Essex while setting a benchmark for future recruitment initiatives. 

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PLMR’s crisis communications experience is second to none, and includes pre-emptive and reactive work across traditional and social media channels. We work with a range of organisations to offer critical communication support when they are faced with difficult and challenging scenarios.