The Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) in England, is running an adult social care recruitment campaign for the second year. ‘Made with Care’ is designed to encourage people to consider a career in the sector. Adult social care campaign to build bigger and better workforce – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
In October 2022 we received a request to assist with the promotion of Made with Care through radio advertising. The brief asked us to focus on the quality of relationships between support workers and adults supported in social care.
Working together
We put a proposal together with a short video clip of Michael Fullerton, and Stephen Adamson talking about the time they spend together. Michael is Director of Wellbeing and has worked closely with Stephen for about 12 years.
Stephen lives in South Norwood, London, in supported living. Stephen is autistic, and can find social interactions and situations extremely difficult to cope with. This has reduced over time with his own personal resilience in addition to the support from his family, direct support team and Michael.
Stephen and Michael have worked together on several projects to promote physical and mental wellbeing. These sports and exercise opportunities are for people with learning disabilities and autistic people.
Great relationships
In his role with self-advocacy group Campaign 4 Change, Stephen is passionate about ensuring there are enough social care support workers with strong values and positive attitudes to develop great relationships with the people they support.
He is also acutely aware that this is currently a real difficulty. Therefore he was more than happy to support the Made with Care Campaign.
The DHSC agreed to Stephen and Michael’s contribution to the radio commercial and their advertising agency made contact to plan the recording in November.
A day in the studio
The day arrived and Michael met Stephen at his house. A private taxi drove them through central London to the recording studio. The studio staff were very welcoming and kind, providing a lovely breakfast while explaining how the voice over recording worked.
Following a briefing, Stephen and Michael entered the recording booth and chatted together naturally into the microphone, with headphones on. Once the recording team felt they had enough material Stephen and Michael sat on the sofa while they edited.
The team worked their magic trimming down the recording, choosing the parts they felt would work best for the commercial. It was vital that the recording was exactly 30 seconds.
Happy with the edited version, the team called in their client from DHSC. Now there were four other people listening virtually to the edited clip. They confirmed they thought it was great and no further recording was necessary.
Making a difference
Stephen said: “It was an incredible experience to visit the studio and make the recording. I hope it will make a difference to increasing recruitment into social care.”
Michael spoke to Stephen’s mother about the experience who said she was proud of Stephen for overcoming his anxieties and going to the studio. She is also delighted that she can hear her son on the radio.
Michael commented: “Adult social care is experiencing a significant recruitment challenge across the board and we were glad to help by talking about our relationship. Career opportunities within the sector are so diverse, interesting and afford people opportunities to seek career development in many different ways. It has given me immense job satisfaction and variety through the years and the opportunity to meet some extraordinary people.”
The advertisement started to air on commercial radio stations across England and Wales in late December and will continue for three months.
Listen to the recording below.
