Resources for Autism (RFA) is a charity providing support workers for autistic individuals and those who love and care for them. Every year its works with over 2,000 beneficiaries and 5,000 family members across two centres and in people’s own homes. But finding those support workers was becoming more difficult, and the charity had a limited budget for attraction. Blackbridge worked with RFA on a pro bono basis to help it to deliver vital and scarce support workers across London and Birmingham, through a campaign that reflected its ‘Everyone Can’ employer value proposition.

The campaign needed to convey that no special qualifications were needed to become a support worker, and show the potential career options available if people joined RFA. The agency discovered that the autistic community is tired of negative portrayals in the media, and wanted to show an organisation that took pride in the strengths of this community. The video format allowed it to focus on three individuals and their support workers, showing the variety of environments candidates might end up working in, and the kinds of challenges they might deal with in the job.

All of the actors who played service users are autistic, having worked with a specialist casting agency, and locations for the shoot were suitable for neurodivergent people. Three videos and one hero video gave a positive portrayal of the lives of support workers and those in the autistic community, and were pushed out across social media over a period of one month. Blackbridge also secured a grant to spend on pay-per-click advertising on Google, which drove traffic to the careers page. RFA was delighted with the results, generating almost 500,000 impressions at a low cost per click.