Case Study – Just Like Family Home Care
Carla Leon is all about “win-win”.
From her days at the United Church of Canada’s innovation arm, where she worked with communities of faith that wanted to explore new ways of “being church” in an increasingly secular society, to her own small business providing online business coaching to budding entrepreneurs, she has always had a knack for spotting a gap and then coming up with a creative way to fill it that makes everyone involved a better person.
Her latest venture is no exception. For the past two years, she’s brought a new model of home health care to Canadian seniors and people with disabilities, as the new CEO of Just Like Family – the first home health care agency in the country to be purchased as a social acquisition and run as a social enterprise over 50% owned by charities.
Social acquisition is an approach to starting a business that minimizes the traditional risks, maximizes the traditional rewards, and lets the new owners feel good about infusing more value into a business that was already doing social good in the community and often beyond.
| Risk Category | Just Like Family |
|---|---|
| Lack of capital | The business was already successful, and management had experience running two of the franchises. RISK LOWERED |
| Difficulty finding customers | The business had an existing client base with potential to expand across the continent. RISK LOWERED |
| Unforeseen expenses | New management didn’t know much about the industry or what might be coming. RISK RAISED |
| Competition | The business is in an industry where a lot of entities (private and public) are in competition for the same customers and for government contracts. RISK RAISED |
| Legal issues | The business came with a structure and many legal agreements already in place RISK LOWERED |
| Burnout | The new management team was made up of seasoned entrepreneurs and social impact workers who knew how to watch out for and guard against burn-out in themselves and others, especially in new situations. RISK LOWERED |
| The ways in which social acquisition lowers risk as way to start a business outnumber how it raises risk 2:1! |
| Reward Category | Just Like Family |
|---|---|
| Greater financial reward | Sustained, increased returns that benefit the business, its employees, the people they serve, and their communities. REWARDS ENHANCED |
| Sense of accomplishment | The good feeling that comes from working daily with others to meet shared goals. REWARDS ENHANCED |
| Personal growth | Opportunities for skill-building, creativity, collaboration, and leadership development. REWARDS ENHANCED |
| Giving back | The knowledge that each individual’s work is giving back to community and helping to meet the needs of others. REWARDS ENHANCED |
| A social acquisition benefits everybody involved with starting the business and does social good! |
Social enterprises can be non-governmental organizations or charities that operate as social good businesses, re-investing profits into meeting the organization’s needs. Or, Like Just Like Family, they can be for-profit enterprises with a social mission, where profits go into meeting that mission. Either way, meeting the mission is the primary concern. Leon emphasizes that Just Like Family’s work to meet its mission of “proving care, community, advocacy and action to support and enhance the lives of everyone we touch” has ripple effects through individual, family, community and larger social life.
You can see it even in the structure of the company itself: Just Like Family 79% female-owned at the franchise level (compared to 4% for businesses overall and 17% for female-owned businesses.)
Just Like Family has been providing quality home care to seniors and people with disabilities since 2010. However, since its social acquisition in 2020 by a coalition of impact investors and charities, it has:
- Expanded to 38 franchises in 5 provinces, with more expansion expected
- Provided care to over 20,000 people last year
- Created an online education portal for its caregivers to ensure that they’re properly trained to provide the best service possible in a growing list of areas.
Just Like Family has written a book about its social acquisition story:
