Many families and experts alike have been asking for a more positive transformation of child protection services in Minnesota. Over the past decade, the need for reform was becoming more obvious: In 2017 alone, more than 16,000 Minnesota children were removed from their homes and placed into foster care due to allegations of abuse or neglect.
But many of those children were further traumatized by the interactions experienced within the child protection system, and through their time in foster care itself.
A general consensus about what to do next arose among people who work closely within the child protection system. Judges, lawyers, social workers and child advocates all agreed: When it’s safe for the children, families should be kept intact whenever possible.
Beginning the Child Protection Transformation
In 2018, Voom CreativeTM was approached by The Child Protection Program (CPP), a small division of Mitchell Hamline Law School in St. Paul, Minnesota. The CPP, combined with the resources and alignment of the Zero Abuse Project (ZAP), an independent Minnesota project founded by attorney and leading child advocate Jeff Anderson, were planning to become organized under one central structure to begin the process of positive child protection transformation.
The stakeholders of these two organizations were motivated to provide well-trained and trauma-informed attorneys during the child protection legal process, an imperative step toward ensuring the best possible outcomes for children and their families.
Initially known as the Institute for Children, Families, and Communities, the newly unified structure was developed out of the desire to streamline and leverage the two entity’s complementary missions to create better understanding of services among target groups, the media and key stakeholders. While CPP and ZAP were known separately for their work in the child protection arena, the Institute wanted Voom to craft a more cohesive brand and communications strategy with strong, value-oriented core messaging and a consistent visual identity to help unify their missions under one umbrella structure.
Positioning the Institute as a central source for research and policy was of primary importance, along with finding ways to make the entity better known as a think tank on child protection issues. These efforts were in addition to fostering and promoting the entity’s overall service pillars. Those pillars focused on training, thought leadership, and parent and child advocacy in preventing, recognizing and responding to child abuse. Helping to align and communicate these goals is where Voom made valuable contributions.
Building a Unified Brand
Voom was hired to develop a comprehensive strategy and an executable plan to make the mission and brand of the new Institute well known among key constituencies. Voom’s primary tasks were to develop a new brand, including a more memorable organizational name that unified the Child Protection Program and Zero Abuse Project, and to create a communications strategy that seated the brand as a major influencer in child protection awareness and prevention.
Tactics were pursued in three specific work phases that included 1) the creation and implementation of a brand strategy; 2) a comprehensive brand launch to market to all targets, and 3) a comprehensive public relations and social media strategy to support the brand launch. Individual tactics in these three phases included:
- Researching and vetting to create a mission statement and adopt a new, more memorable and effective organizational name, which eventually became The Institute to Transform Child Protection (ITCP).
- Conducting In-Depth Interviews with attorneys, board members, social workers, staff and others who provided valuable information for the name, brand identity and launch plan.
- Crafting and analyzing electronic surveys sent to partners, parents, guardians and others in the foster care system designed to gauge awareness and opinions on issues related to the child protection space.
- Facilitation and analysis of a half-day value proposition session attended by a group of 15 key client stakeholders in the prioritization of organizational benefits, gaps, new opportunities, target audience expectations and timely deliverables.
- Development of a new logo and brand architecture.
- Development of a comprehensive editorial calendar and PR strategy to launch the new name and mission
One Umbrella to Improve Child Welfare
Voom Creative is proud of the work completed for this important project. The Institute to Transform Child Protection has now become an effective and well-known entity, which works tirelessly under one umbrella to improve child welfare and reduce trauma in the legal system. Through its new core mission, the Institute’s multi-pronged approach pursues policy reform, highly focused training, and experiential opportunities for law/graduate students, legal professionals, courtroom/legislative stakeholders, and community partners.
ITCP also works with the experienced staff of Mitchell Hamline Law School, including its director of trauma-informed services and training director, with the ground-breaking policy and research initiatives that began with the Child Protection Program and Zero Abuse Project.