#2004 The Media, Public Relations . . .

#2004 The Media, Public Relations, and Child Protection:
An in-service training program for child protection
professionals and foster families
The Curriculum is presented in five sections.

Section 1: Public Relations: The serious misunderstanding of public relations and its critical role in achieving agency excellence is based on a confusion of terms. First, public relations is not advertising, although advertising is usually an element in a successful public relations program. Public relations is not "public information" either, although effective public information activities are critical to successful public relations. Public relations is not marketing, although no agency, public or private, can achieve excellence in today's services environment without well-developed marketing expertise. Successful public relations, all agency relationships with the public, start inside your agency. First and foremost, the success of your agency's public relations rests on relationships, people interacting with people. This section focuses on internal transactions, agency mission and values, developing your public relations plan and targeting public relations initiatives.

Section 2: The Media: At almost every conference, gathering, or meeting you have heard members of the child protection community argue for more and better communication with the media and the community. However, the call for action is typically a discreet, one-time activity. If "X" is done, then the problem will be lessened and things will be instantly better. Negative public attitudes and beliefs do not change quickly or easily, especially when they are daily reinforced by national, state, and local stories from other communities that have no direct relationship to you or your agency. Your public relations success thus depends on how effective you are in assuring that your messages are clear enough and powerful enough to counteract the ongoing negative conditioning of the public by the media. This section presents a comprehensive outline for developing a successful strategy for engaging and communicating with the media.

Section 3: Including Foster Parents: In years past, foster parents could simply leave public relations worries to other people. All they needed to do was be responsible people and take good care of the children. In fact, the agency did not have to concern itself much with public relations either. It was enough to have an attractive brochure and take care to be nice to the right people, especially in relation to fund raising activities. In recent years, though, the situation has changed dramatically. Child protection in general and foster care in particular have become the focus of significant, negative public attention. State Governors, national and state legislators, advocacy groups, and local officials call for investigations and sweeping change. The public is told that there are severe system problems, that children are receiving inadequate and perhaps incompetent care, and that things are bad and getting worse. Public relations are no longer something that can just be left up to someone at the agency or to the few people who are really interested in that sort of thing. The problems and issues have become far too serious to be ignored by anyone in the child protection community, including foster parents. This section offers a clear "role definition" for foster parents in the public relations plan and ten techniques to becoming a successful partner in the public relations representative role.

Section 4: Participant Worksheets: Included are worksheets suitable for photocopying as handouts for each of the first three sections of the curriculum. Each worksheet is identified by reference in the text and numbered sequentially in the section.

Section 5: Trainer's Key Points: For the group training settings a user's guide to creating the overhead transparencies, a series of overhead transparency masters for each section, a generic evaluation form and certificate of participation.

The curriculum is published in a three ring binder format; the worksheets and overhead masters are easily removed for reproduction and saved for reuse. #2004 - $30.00 Ea.