Case in point was a client who had kept an old tape of her daughter’s wedding for years – the tape featuring her late husband face and voice. It was a recording of a whole day the family had long given up hope of ever seeing again.
A priceless experience
That is because no one owns a VHS player these days – hence most tapes invariably sit on shelves gathering dust. That did not deter Rob and his team though as they took it upon themselves to get the tape digitised so the client could sit down with her family and share those memories again. They watched it together, and heard his voice fill the room once more.
Cost of digitisation may only have come to a paltry £14, but for the client the experience proved priceless.
Knowing the model better
After twenty-five years advising hundreds of aspiring business owners, and dozens of franchise brands, including Radfield itself, Rob knows the numbers and the model better than most. Describing it as ‘really rewarding’ he adds: “You put so much into building the business, so seeing the difference it can make to people and knowing you have played a part in that is a great feeling.”
It is time to ‘Be There’
Underpinning everything Radfield wants to achieve is the Be There movement. A guiding principle for all franchise partners it means looking past the operational detail of the visit itself and focusing on what makes someone feel like themselves again.
Take Julie Scott, whose team over in Cheshire & Ellesmere Port has committed to building a personal moment for one client every single month. One lady had loved horses her whole life, so a care professional arranged to bring a horse round to the house for the afternoon. “She got to stroke the horse and spend time with it, and it was just lovely,” Julie says. Not everyone has a horse to bring round, of course, but it is the instinct that counts, and sometimes it is as simple as baking someone a cake to brighten a grey afternoon.
Jackie and Mark Gillen of Radfield Home Care Wakefield & Huddersfield tell a gentler version of the same thing. One of the people they support, widowed after a lifetime of marriage, had drawn away from the world before care arrived. Slowly, with the same familiar faces turning up week after week, her confidence and her routine came back. Jackie puts the whole philosophy in one sentence:
“We focus on the person, not the task. The task matters, but it is not the priority.”
So where do you fit into this?
When you are looking for the right franchise to help you build a business, the numbers definitely matter: turnover, territory, how much you need to invest etc. All essential parts of weighing up an opportunity, but the franchise partners mentioned here came to Radfield for something more than that, too. Yes, they wanted a sound business they could shape their own way, and they found it – Julie’s was named National Franchise Partner of the Year at Radfield’s 2026 conference. What they also wanted was to create moments exactly like these for the people around them who need them most.
That is the part of a franchise like this one a spreadsheet could never show you, and it might just be the part that matters most.
Key takeaways
- Radfield Home Care franchisee Rob Dancy helped a client recover a digitised VHS tape of her daughter’s wedding for just £14 – illustrating the human impact that defines the brand’s Be There philosophy.
- After 25 years advising franchise brands including Radfield, Rob chose to become a franchisee himself, citing the strength of the model and the clarity of the Be There guiding principle.
- The Be There movement asks franchisees to commit to building personal moments for every client – going beyond task completion to focus on the person receiving care.
- Julie Scott’s team in Cheshire and Ellesmere Port and Jackie and Mark Gillen in Wakefield and Huddersfield both exemplify the Be There approach in their day-to-day operations.
- Radfield Home Care argues that the differentiating factor in choosing a franchise cannot be captured on a spreadsheet – it is the quality of human connection the model is built around.
