‘Gezinshuis.com’ is a Dutch organisation with the goal to create and support family homes in the

Netherlands. Children and adolescents whom are placed in care, find a safe and involved environment in these family homes. This environment can help them to create a durable perspective on their future.

Why Gezinshuis.com?

Worldwide a significant group of children and adolescents cannot live with their families for various reasons. In the Netherlands, where Gezinshuis.com is established, waiting lists in youth care are very long. Even for children in need of 24-hour care. Gezinshuis.com believes that for these youngsters placement in a family home is often a very good solution. A family home can offer suitable possibilities for personal development by sharing daily life with each other. Both youngsters and parents learn in a family home how to take each others interests into account, to work together and build a confidential relationship.

In the Netherlands the youth care ‘at the end of the chain’ has been under exposed for years. The organisation Gezinshuis.com wants to make a change to this underexposure. In 2006 it has made the first steps towards creating a network of vital family homes throughout the Netherlands. Their goal is to at least have a network of 50 family homes by the end of 2012.

How?

Family homes by Gezinshuis.com are characterized by:

-       An approach pointed at the strengthening of children’s talents and possibilities

-       Vitalising instead of problematizing

-       Entrepreneurial parents which are in charge of the family home

-       Offering children a healthy and challenging environment

Professional

Being a family home parent is a profession for entrepreneurial people, which asks for specific knowledge and skills. It is a profession that deserves appreciation. This also includes a well thought out training program. Gezinshuis.com offers (beginning and experienced) family home parents an appropriate training pathway. As a member of Gezinshuis.com, family homes can also take advantage of special offers from various companies.

The added value of Franchising

Gezinshuis.com has developed a franchise formula. The strength of family homes lies in living together on a daily basis and in that way reinforcing the empowerment of ‘the normal life’. The professionalism of the family home parent is paramount for the quality of the family home. Professionalism, in this sense, is expressed by complicity, joy of life, sense of mind, life experience, vitality, pedagogic expertise, social complicity, an enterprising personality and sustainability. Altogether we call these characteristics ‘a-specific professionalism’. The family home parent is for over 80 percent the expert in this domain, since there is a tight connection with the healthy qualities of every day life. This fundamental idea is congruently translated into the formula of Gezinshuis.com:

-       Family home parents are the entrepreneurs; they are being supported by experts at specific domains

-       The experts (other caregivers) do not play a steering, but a supportive role

-       The franchise formula is formulated as an service concept; it offers service to the family home parents and the children and young people that live there

-       In the Netherlands (youth)care organisations share the responsibility to take care of quality care based on conditions of the allowances. Gezinshuis.com seeks for cooperation with the consideration and strengthening of separate responsibilities.

Gezinshuis.com works in a Master franchise construction:

She functions as master-franchisor to existing healthcare providers. Family homes sign an agreement as a franchisee with a healthcare provider. In this way youth care providers become master franchisee of Gezinshuis.com. With the help of Gezinshuis.com they can attract existing or new family home parents to become franchisee or work as paid employer according to the formula. The care provider is not only franchisee of Gezinshuis.com but at the same time franchisor of the family home parents.

One of the reasons to move to master franchising is that this unique concept can be rolled out over the Netherlands quickly. Gezinshuis.com is in a position where it can close contracts with several care providers. The basic idea of franchising, namely cooperating between entrepreneurs, gets several meanings this way.

Five Pillars

To sum up, the five most important pillars which create the context of the franchise formula are:

-       Sustainable connections

-       Integral design

-       Aimed at self-sufficiency

-       Social enterprises

-       Seeking for cooperation