Samenvatting

The Eigen Kracht Centrale is striving for a society based on participation and mutual self reliance of citizens, where citizens remain in charge of their own life, especially when dealing with organizations and government bodies. It is important, in the Eigen Kracht Centrale vision, that everyone is part of society and everyone can participate, everyone has a say and remains in charge of his or her own life, everyone gets support from their own social network: family, friends, neighbors, etc.
Especially when problems arise that might lead to involvement of various (social care) institutions.
To implement this vision in daily life, the Eigen Kracht Centrale has introduced the Family Group-conference as a decision making model. This model appears to be effective for citizens to make their own plans. When given responsibility for the situation and the solution, citizens, in every situation thinkable, create, according to themselves and professionals as well, save and creative plans that fit.
In this article the FG-c for a group, district or neighbourhood is discussed and is illustrated by real life examples. Even when people don’t know each other, they can make a plan to solve conflicts in their street or neighbourhood: they all have a strong interest in living in safe, comfortable surroundings. Although the experience with this variant of FGC is limited in The Netherlands: what are they, what lessons can be learned?