Speaking, Events & Team Sessions
My aim is your aim: to recruit the next generation of Foster Carers
Invite Me to Join the Conversation
Not every event needs a keynote speaker.
Sometimes the most useful conversation takes place around a table with a small fostering team trying to understand why enquiries have fallen, why applicants are dropping out or how recruitment needs to change.
I am happy to contribute to:
- Foster Carer Recruitment team meetings
- Fostering service meetings
- Recruitment and marketing meetings
- Leadership and management meetings
- Foster Carer forums
- Local Authority and Independent Fostering Agency meetings
- Regional recruitment meetings
- Regional Care Cooperative discussions
- Recruitment strategy days
- Team development days and away days
- Workshops
- Webinars
- Round-table discussions
- Panel discussions
- Conferences and sector events
This can be a structured presentation, an informal discussion around a particular challenge, or a facilitated session designed to help your team look at Foster Carer Recruitment differently.
Speak. Discuss. Facilitate.
Speak
For conferences, webinars and larger events, I can deliver structured presentations on Foster Carer Recruitment, recruitment strategy, applicant behaviour, marketing, digital visibility and the changing fostering landscape.
Discuss
Invite me into an existing team, management or forum meeting.
Rather than delivering a presentation, we can have an open discussion around the challenges you are experiencing and what may be happening elsewhere across Foster Carer Recruitment.
Sometimes asking different questions can be as valuable as providing different answers.
Facilitate
I can also facilitate focused sessions around a specific recruitment challenge.
That might be declining enquiries, poor conversion, recruitment marketing, regional recruitment, recruitment planning or understanding where prospective Foster Carers are being lost.
The purpose is not simply to identify problems.
It is to help the people in the room identify practical opportunities for improvement.
A Constructive Outside Perspective
Coming from outside an organisation can sometimes make it easier to see things that are difficult to see when you are working within them every day.
But an outside perspective should never mean arriving with a list of criticisms.
Your teams understand their communities, their Foster Carers, their children and their operational realities.
I bring another perspective to add to that knowledge.
My experience combines:
35+ years in professional recruitment
13 years working directly in Foster Carer Recruitment
Experience working within both Local Authorities and Independent Fostering Agencies
10 years' lived experience as an approved Foster Carer
An MBA and extensive commercial and operational experience
That combination allows me to look at Foster Carer Recruitment through several different lenses — recruiter, operator, Foster Carer and independent specialist.
The best conversations happen when we put those different perspectives together.
What Could We Talk About?
Every organisation is different, so sessions can be tailored around the issues that matter to your team.
Some of the conversations I can bring to your organisation include:
Finding the Next Generation of Foster Carers
Who might foster in the future, where we are going to find them and whether our current recruitment approaches are capable of reaching them.
Marketing Is Not Recruitment
Why creating awareness and recruiting a Foster Carer are not the same thing — and why marketing and recruitment need to work together rather than being treated as interchangeable.
From Enquiry to Approval: Where Are We Losing People?
Looking beyond enquiry numbers to understand what happens throughout the recruitment journey and why potentially suitable applicants disengage.
What 35 Years in Recruitment Has Taught Me About Fostering
Lessons from professional recruitment, commercial organisations, Foster Carer Recruitment and lived fostering experience — and what the sector can learn from outside itself.
The 100-Point Foster Carer Recruitment Review
Exploring the strategic, operational, marketing and behavioural factors that collectively determine whether a recruitment service succeeds.
Recruitment in a Regional World
The opportunities and risks created by regional recruitment, recruitment hubs and Regional Care Cooperatives — and why collaboration must not mean losing local knowledge.
AI, Search and the Future of Foster Carer Recruitment
How Google, AI and changing online behaviour are altering the way prospective Foster Carers discover, research and compare fostering providers.
Building a Recruitment Plan That Actually Gets Delivered
Moving from an annual marketing calendar to a practical recruitment plan that identifies who you need to recruit, where you are likely to find them, what you need to say and who is responsible for making it happen.
These are examples rather than a fixed menu.
If your organisation has a particular Foster Carer Recruitment challenge, we can build the conversation around that.
It Doesn't have to be a Conference
An Hour or two talking things through with your team may make all the difference
An Hour with your team
An hour discussing with your team solutions to problems you already know you have
Discussion with Senior Managers
Discussing the strategic development of policy and process to improve performace of Foster Carer Recruitment
Workshops
You know the challenge, a workshop to discuss and resolve and practically plan solutions
Regional Meeting
Attending a regional meeting to discuss any aspect of Foster Carer Recruitment
My Aim Is Your Aim
We Both want more Foster Carers
There is already a great deal of knowledge and experience within fostering organisations.
My job is not to replace that.
It is to add another perspective.
To ask questions.
To share what I have seen work elsewhere.
To challenge assumptions where that is useful.
To contribute ideas.
And to help turn discussion into practical action.
Because regardless of whether we work for a Local Authority, Independent Fostering Agency, regional organisation or independently, the ultimate objective is the same:
To find, recruit and retain enough Foster Carers to meet the needs of children.
Invite Me to Your Next Meeting or Event
Telephone: 07926693105
E-mail: rolfe.pearce@fcrspecialist.com
Garden Mill, Garden Street North, Halifax, West Yorks HX3 6BP