An honest look at what franchise ownership actually means, and why we've deliberately stayed out of it.
Almost every well-known home care brand you'll come across — the ones with national advertising and offices in every town — is a franchise. Individual people buy the right to operate under a national brand name in their local area, following a shared model and set of systems.
There's nothing wrong with that model, and plenty of franchise offices do genuinely good work. But it's worth understanding the difference, because it affects some things families care about directly.
A franchise owner has bought into a national brand and pays ongoing fees to use it. Decisions about pricing structures, branding, and often significant parts of how the service operates are set at a national level, not purely by the local team. Staff turnover, management changes, and ownership changes at the local franchise level can all happen without the brand itself changing — which means the actual people delivering your care can change more than the name suggests.
We're not part of any national network. There's no franchise fee built into what you pay, no shared national call centre, and no requirement to follow a corporate playbook that wasn't written with Formby, Southport, or Sefton specifically in mind.
When you call us, you get one of the three of us — Anita, Natalie or Nicola — not a call centre reading from a script. When something needs deciding, we decide it, based on what's actually right for that client, not a policy written for hundreds of offices nationally.
| Typical Franchise | Select Home Care Services | |
|---|---|---|
| Who answers the phone | Local office or national call centre | A founder, personally |
| Who sets the model | National franchisor | Us, based on what works locally |
| Ownership stability | Can change hands as a business asset | Founder-owned since day one |
| Local knowledge | Varies by franchisee | Grew up in these communities |
| Fees built into pricing | Franchise fees typically factored in | None — just the service |
Franchise and national providers exist for good reasons — they can offer wider coverage, more structured clinical oversight for complex needs, and consistency of process across many locations. If your needs are more complex, or extend into personal or nursing care, one of those providers may genuinely be the better fit, and we'll say so honestly if that's the case.
But if what you're looking for is home help and companionship, delivered by people who actually live in the community they serve, and who answer the phone themselves — that's specifically what being independent lets us offer.
No obligation, no pressure — just an honest conversation with one of the people who actually run this business.