Social Media and National Communication

The need for foster care continues to grow each year. Unfortunately, this growth means the number of children needing care out of home. In just a six month period (1/2019-6/2019), the number of children in foster or kinship care ( also termed “out of home care”) increased from 13, 782 children to 14, 205 children that have been removed from their homes and placed in temporary care. Through abuse hotline reports, police incidents, and investigative measures by the Department of Children and Families (DCS), children that are removed from their home have been assessed as not being able to return home due to unsafe environments. Foster care families are desperately needed in Arizona. According to Arizonans for Children, “Arizona leads the nation in the number of children per capita in group or shelter care.” The need to recruit, train, and support more foster care families for these children are essential. To accomplish this is a challenge due to the negative connotation that comes with the foster care system. Truths and myths include the behavior of the children, communication with the biological family, difficult case workers, and the length of time in foster homes. A way to move toward correct and truthful information in order to accommodate foster children is to open the paths of communication. T.V commercials, pamphlets, and radio ads continue to be useful locally but there is also a need to communicate with a Statewide audience.

Foster care is obviously not a problem limited to Arizona. The need for foster care is a worldwide issue, handled similarly and differently depending on the country. For example, China Focus, a University of California San Diego supported website, considers foster care in China to be similar in need or more in need due to the large amount of female children in orphanages. This is due to China’s former one-child rule. China does have similar placement styles to America such as foster family homes and group homes. A second example is Australia which also has a similar system to the United States but also considers residential homes, independent living options, private or public boarding homes, and community-sector family group homes as suitable arrangements for foster care. Children who were removed from their home in Russia were placed in an orphanages as part of their policies. However this practice has since changed. According to the Eurasia Foundation, “The transformation in Russian institutions has been dramatic.” Rather than abolishing troubled orphanages, they are being reformed into family-friendly institutions that can help foster and protect children.”

Discussing global challenges of children is a reflection of a world wide issue that can be filtered down and found within our local communities. These social issues have deep and complicated challenges that take time to resolve. Tackling these issues could be discussed on a different blog post but my thoughts are to increase foster care families to support the rise of children who are in need of out of home care. A key way to communicate to local and national communities is through social media. Although social media can be considered a global source of communication, the real need is to create dialogue nationally and more importantly locally. No matter where we are located in the United States, we can become involved in caring for children through foster care.

Social Media

Social media continues to be a focal point of the Internet of people from all ages, cultures, and backgrounds. With millions of Americans using the internet, utilizing social media to promote foster care in an excellent mode to reach a national and local audience. Current, popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are excellent ways to connect with our audiences.

Elise Dopson gives several suggestions for successfully running a nonprofit through social media. She says:

• Post interactive content to encourage engagement
• Include hashtags to increase your reach
• Use visuals to drive website traffic
• Check in daily and respond to questions
• Make it easy for followers to donate

DCS Arizona is a government body that provides statewide information about foster care within social media. How does DCS Arizona utilize social media? Although DCS Arizona recognizes the importance of a presence on social media, they only utilize two platforms: Facebook and Twitter. Their Facebook account posts almost daily promoting adoption profiles, community events, informational videos about safe sleeping for infants, summer camps for fosters children, adoption and foster information nights, and more. Each post has a large, colorful image. They use some hashtag links but mostly provide outside links to websites for additional information. Also on their Facebook page, DCS Arizona has recommendations to other supportive, relative pages, as well as number of videos. On their video page, a viewer can watch a variety of short videos. Celebrity endorsed causes is an excellent way to attract followers. One short video shows an interview with radio hosts John Jay and Rich that follow a Christmas Activity for foster care children to create a fun and memorable experience. A second video shares an interview and story of Martin Hanzal from the Arizona Coyotes and his support of foster care by fishing and mentoring foster care children. I did notice, however, that many of the videos posted are several years old. Ilba Ibrisevic discusses that videos that last for 24 hours or less and then disappear are one of the seven social media trends trending today. Participating in this type of trend can keep your organization content fresh and original attracting and maintaining followers.

DCS Arizona also has a Twitter account that tweets almost every day. Their account mostly retweets from other sources and does not regularly include photos or images.

Interestingly, my local agency, although a large organization in Tucson, does not have a social media presence.

Strategies to communicate with diverse groups

UNESCO is an example of an organization that uses strategies to communicate with diverse groups. From UNESCO’s main website page, visitors can choose between six major languages which will accommodate a vast number of viewers. Also from their main page, users can connect through social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and can link to Apple iTunes to listen to podcasts. Each site has the ability to read or view in several languages. 

Because UNESCO is a global organization, content will reflect on a variety of global projects and initiatives. A reader will find topics such a genocide in Nambia, education about the Holocaust, Vanuatu culture and natural disasters, and more. UNESCO uses large images in nearly every post which attracts and engages more viewers. Their YouTube channel has hundreds of video with varying content and purpose and depicts “stories” from around the world. 

UNESCO is a major global organization that uses social media as a way to connect with audiences worldwide. As challenging as this is, they are successful in producing content that is able to be viewed in many languages, has a variety of international content, uses trending tactics to appeal to today’s readers, and promotes their projects through media. 

How then can UNESCO’s example apply locally? Having the ability to choose between languages is a great option to reach a wider audience and allows readers to be active participants. Also, creating a variety of multicultural videos depicting personas that relate to readers would be advantageous. Taking advantage of popular social media platforms and knowing which sites your audience uses regularly can increase followers. Using hashtags in your content can then be shared to further advertise your sites.

Conclusion

Foster care statistics are not going to change anytime soon and trends have shown that the number is increasing. Therefore, foster care families are in great need. In order to recruit, teach, and train new foster families, effective techniques using social media can help reach that goal. Having a strong presence on popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter can increase the number of readers, viewers, and followers. Creating original hashtags is an easy to way to spread your mission and message. In addition, keeping up to date with social media trends and applying new tactic can keep your social media sites fresh and original thus improving traffic, comments, and hopefully donations and support to your foster care organization.

Works Cited

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.”About page.” http://www.aihw.gov.au

Barnardos Australia. “Home page.”www.barnardos.org.au

Casas de los Ninos. “About page.”www.azcourts.gov

Dopson, Elise. “Social Media for Nonprofits: How to Make an Impact with Little Budget.” 

Eurasia Foundation.”In Foster Care Reform, American and Russian Experts Converge.” http://www.eurasia.org

Facebook home.www.facebook.com/arizonadcs/videos/

Ibrisevic, Ilma.”7 Non-Profit Social Media Trends.” 

Martin, Olivia. “A glimpse of China’s Foster Care System.”