Cafcass represents children in family court cases across England, playing a crucial safeguarding role and supporting over 140,000 children every year. In late 2020, Caritas secured a project to supply 70 locum social workers across all of Cafcass's operations in England over a 12-month period. The project posed significant challenges: a general scarcity of available locum social workers, a tight timeframe, and the discrete, specialised skill set required for the role particularly the fast-paced Section 7 report work central to Cafcass's court-related assessments.
Client Feedback
Client Objective
Unlike roles with Local Authorities, the NHS, or the NSPCC — which share common threads that let locum candidates move fluidly between contracts work at Cafcass differs substantially, focusing on safeguarding vulnerable children during court proceedings.
This had historically made Cafcass roles unattractive to locum social workers. Caritas's objective was to overcome this perception problem within a short timeline, repositioning Cafcass as an appealing employer and engaging candidates who were either actively seeking their next contract or nearing the end of a current assignment.
Client Success
Caritas created a specialist account delivery team and developed a coordinated, multi-channel campaign built around:
- Employee Value Proposition (EVP): Developed to sell the key benefits of working for Cafcass and shift Social Workers' perceptions of the organisation.
- Email marketing: Cafcass opportunities promoted to thousands of candidates across the Caritas database.
- Telephone canvassing: Hundreds of hours undertaken by the dedicated Caritas account team.
- Proactive job pushing: Roles distributed via SMS candidate engagement systems and the Caritas Career Passport app.
- Targeted PPC campaigns: Highly targeted pay-per-click advertising across search and social media.
Results
- Delivered 20 candidates placed within the first 3 months of the programme
- Contributed to safeguarding thousands of vulnerable children within the family justice system
- Strengthened the existing Caritas–Cafcass relationship and expanded the scope of engagement, including support for permanent staff recruitment
- Continued work underway to fill all 70 requirements by July 2021
Client Feedback
"The team at Caritas have been a long-standing partner to Cafcass but during 2020 and beyond, their professionalism, expertise and commitment has been especially evident. Like many organisations, Cafcass was faced with unprecedented resourcing challenges but in Caritas we have a partner that has been responsive, considered and insightful and this has allowed us to make great progress in recruiting experienced Social Workers to work with children and young people, not only in a temporary capacity but also now helping us recruit permanent staff."
— Ian Turley, HR Resourcing Partner, Cafcass