Best Campaign in Scotland finalist: Orbit Communications

Client

The Scottish Children’s Services Coalition (SCSC) is an alliance of leading independent and third sector service providers. These providers have come together to work with political and other key stakeholders, campaigning to improve the delivery of children and young people’s services.

Brief and Objectives

The SCSC tasked Orbit with devising a campaign to increase Government funding for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) in Scotland. A perfect opportunity to achieve this in a fiscally constrained environment was seen as coming through the UK Chancellor’s Autumn Statement in December 2014. This highlighted that £125m (over 5 years) in additional funding would be coming to the Scottish Government as a result of the UK Budget in March 2015.

The SCSC set Orbit a target to try and obtain £20m (over 5 years) of this for CAMHS and it was aimed to deliver this through a public affairs campaign involving extensive lobbying supported by media relations activity.

Background

Estimates vary, but research suggests that 20% of children have a mental health problem in any given year, and about 10% at any one time. These include issues such as depression, anxiety, suicide, OCD and self-harm.

Research and planning

The Autumn Statement in December 2014 revealed that £125m would be coming to the Scottish Government as a result of the Barnett consequentials, to be formally announced in the UK Budget in March 2015.

This allowed us time to identify and engage with relevant stakeholder audiences, researched as having an obvious interest in the area. A communications plan was established that aimed to generate a series of timely parliamentary debates, parliamentary motions and questions, supported by a comprehensive media relations strategy.

It also allowed time to gather case studies and evidence to highlight the high societal costs of child and adolescent mental health.

Strategy and tactics

Campaigning to ensure that £20m of the £125m in additional funding coming to the Scottish Government was going to be invested in mental health services was clearly going to be challenging. Mental health provision has always been viewed as the poor relation when compared with physical health, and there were of course other increased demands, be it education, transport or housing.

Through lobbying key stakeholders, building partnerships with other relevant organisations and undertaking an extensive media relations campaign our aim was to impress on the Scottish Government the clear requirement and public demand for investment in these vital services.

Implementation - December 2014 - May 2015

We used our research to develop a persuasive case with Government Ministers, opposition, other key influencers and the media to raise awareness of the issue and generate support.

The public were also energised through a petition and extensive media relations activity.

We:

• Wrote early on in the process to raise the CAMHS issue with the Scottish Government Minister for Sport, Health Improvement and Mental Health and met with him to highlight our case and seek increased funding.
• Used parliamentary questions through MSPs identified as having an interest in the subject to raise awareness of the issue and seek figures relating to CAMHS matters such as waiting times; staffing levels and funding.
• Met with key opposition spokespeople, MSPs and Special Advisers and received third-party support from other relevant organisations, such as Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People and Action for Sick Children in Scotland.
• Delivered extensive local and national coverage – both broadcast and print - with news articles about the campaign, letters to the media and a regular series of opinion pieces. This was also supported by a regular series of e-newsletters targeting MSPs and third sector organisations such as mental health and other charities.
• Secured the support of The Times through their Time to Mind campaign in March as well as securing the editorial support of key publications such as The Herald, The Scotsman, Daily Record and The National.
• Launched an online petition via the 38 degrees website, addressed to the First Minister. This was again supported through extensive media activity in both national and local publications and a “Call to Action” e-newsletter circulated via relevant organisations to their members.
• Secured a Member’s debate (after gaining cross-party support) in the Scottish Parliament in January by David Stewart MSP on educational psychologist numbers (attended by 30 MSPs). A further debate on mental health conditions was secured in March (attended by 80 MSPs). Briefings were provided in advance of these and there were extensive name recognition of SCSC and the campaign. A parliamentary motion was also lodged, seeking the additional funding from the UK Budget be used for tackling CAMHS.
• Throughout the whole campaign extensive social media activity was undertaken on Facebook and Twitter, receiving endorsements from a variety of sources including MSPs, celebrities such as Gail Porter and Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People.

Provide evidence of the distinct role and results of public affairs and lobbying

On 24th of May, the Scottish Government announced that it would be investing £85million to improve mental health services for children and young people in Scotland over the next five years.

The campaign objective, as developed with the client, was not only fully met but exceeded by more than fourfold.

Measurement and evaluation

Over the course of the 6 month campaign:

• 35 MSPs spoke passionately on this issue in debates in the Scottish Parliament, with 15 specifically mentioning the campaign.
• Visits to the relevant page on www.thescsc.org.uk increased by 52%  
• 943 tweets were sent featuring #mentalhealth with 20,000 visits to www.thescsc.org.uk.
• 730 signatories put their names to the online petition.

The overwhelmingly positive media coverage highlighted that over the course of the campaign there were over 25 million Opportunities to See, with top media sources being:

1. Times (UK)
2. BBC Scotland (also online)
3. STV
4. BBC Radio Scotland/BBC Radio 4
5. The Sun/Daily Record
6. Forth FM/Clyde FM
7. Herald

Budget and cost effectiveness

From planning to implementation and then completion, the budget equated to £6,000, delivering £85m of funding. The campaign yielded over 25 million Opportunities to See (OTS). For every £1 spent the campaign delivered over 4,100 OTS.