The Texas Permanency Outcomes Project (TXPOP) develops sustainable best practices utilized by child welfare agencies across Texas to connect children to their birth families, regardless of their permanency outcome. TXPOP is a project of the Texas Institute for Child & Family Wellbeing and the Texas Center for Child and Family Studies, in collaboration with the federal Children’s Bureau, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, and the Children’s Commission.
As Communications Lead on this project, I’ve developed the TXPOP logo and visual identity but also lead the TXPOP team through a branding and strategic planning series. In order to establish the TXPOP vision and mission statements and develop talking points, I utilized Compression Planning, a type of meeting facilitation that allows participants to “churn kernels into rich ideas” quickly. Through 6 virtual meetings, we established the TXPOP vision and mission statements, a description of our scope of work, and developed 8 personas that represented TXPOP’s main audiences. We determined these audiences through stakeholder analysis. This work has been further translated to how we communicate about this project externally. We utilize case scenarios and person-centered storytelling to train and educate others in our professional training and academy, and on our website and promotional materials. I hand illustrated all our “characters.”
Another feature of the TXPOP approach is to include the voices the work is for. I am currently leading an advisory group of caregivers and birth parents to develop a multimedia social marketing campaign for caregivers. This will be released in October 2022. I’ve also been directing the instructional design of this project’s online course delivery. These courses utilize multimedia such as videos, case scenarios, quizzes and discussions, and interactive activities. You can see an example of one of these courses here.
