Effectively Conveying Your Messages
How you talk about children and families and your advocacy goals can be as important as your advocacy strategies. It’s important to think about your messaging techniques—how you frame your issue and explain it to others—as you plan and implement your advocacy efforts.
Families Rising, in collaboration with Generations United and the National Foster Parent Association, created the following items to help organizations in kinship care, foster care, and adoption talk with the media, policymakers, and the general public about the importance of children having supported families:
- Messaging Memo – an outline of key messages, sample talking points, and relevant research for child welfare advocacy related to ensuring that children need families and families need support
- Communication Tips
- Quick Tips for Working with the Media
- Building Relationships with the Media to Get Your Message Across
- Sample Commentaries or Letters to the Editor
- Recommendations to Encourage Positive Media Coverage of Foster Care, Adoption, and Kinship Care
- Brains in Default Mode (from the Communications Consortium Media Center)
- Developing and Communicating Messages (from the Communications Consortium Media Center)
We hope these resources will help you in your advocacy efforts to ensure that children who cannot remain at home are placed safely with families who have they support they need.
