Volz-Schmidt Rose
Organization: wellcome
Year Founded: 2002
Country: Germany
Website: www.wellcome-online.de
Geographic Area of Impact: Germany.
Model: Social Business
Focus: Children and Youth,Women.
Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Germany, 2007 Video The Innovation Wellcome supports new families. It provides fast and non-bureaucratic support if a mother feels overwhelmed in dealing with a newborn or many children at the same time. The service is designed to reduce stressful situations and reduce violence against children as well as post-partum depressions. wellcome recruits and trains volunteers, typically experienced mothers with grown-up children, to go into families requiring temporary support. wellcome works with a wide net of institutions and pediatricians. Mothers simply call and ask for support, without providing medical or other explanations. Families are expected to pay a service charge of €4 per hour. This fee can be lowered or waived if necessary. Since its inception through year 2008, wellcome has supported over 2,000 families in Germany. The demand primarily comes from families with twins or triplets, single mothers, families with three or more children, and families who have just moved to the respective town. Wellcome judges that about 25% of its beneficiaries are families in which the stressful situation of a newborn is confounded by an additional stress or crisis such as divorce. It is particularly in these circumstances where wellcome’s impact is the greatest. An independent study by the University of Kiel concluded that the offer has the potential to prevent violence against babies. Background Germany is facing declining birth rates as more and more women, particularly those with an academic background, decide not to have children. Many are deterred by the lack of supporting infrastructure. Still, around 700,000 children are born every year. Many mothers do not have their families close by and the stress of the first months with a newborn can lead to depression or violence. As society becomes more and more mobile, the family support needed in such circumstances is often not available. Strategy A volunteer should not replace the regular baby-sitter. Volunteers typically can accompany the mother or children on medical appointments, take care of the older children, or watch the baby while the mother can do the shopping. The support lasts for a few months and should end with the first birthday of the baby. Wellcome refers families in need to other institutions when needs persist beyond this period. Wellcome acts as a gateway to the numerous organizations in Germany, offering support to families and children. The problem nationally is not the lack of services, but a lack of knowledge among families about available services. Wellcome has also started a program for families on the edge, where employees fulfill a wish on the first, second and third birthday of the child. This gives wellcome an opportunity to follow up with marginalized families. Wellcome also carefully monitors the quality of the services of its volunteers. Volunteers fill in a questionnaire after their first visit to a family as well as an exit survey, documenting what they have been doing and for how many hours. They receive trainings on specific problem situations that they might confront. Wellcome is organized as a social franchise. The headquarters in Hamburg works with regional family institutions in Germany that take the wellcome concept and add it to their programs. These again coordinate a number of local teams. They typically have a team coordinator in charge of taking phone calls of families in need and recruiting volunteers. The regional and local teams are largely independent of the headquarters, particularly in raising funds for their operations. But they operate under the same brand, receive central marketing and PR support and follow the same standards. In return for these services, the regional teams pay a small fee to the center in Hamburg. Wellcome’s expansion plans are very aggressive. It currently has almost 90 local teams and wants to expand to 250 by 2011 to cover all of Germany. In addition, it is looking at piloting a support group targeted at Turkish minorities in Hamburg. Wellcome is still largely dependent on donations and government support. In addition, it is developing partnerships with corporations. Parents pay a small fee to cover the variable expenses of the service. The Entrepreneur Rose Volz-Schmidt decided to start wellcome after experiencing the difficulties of moving to a new city with a newborn child. She is a mother of three, including twins. Initially, her motivation was to fill the support gap for new mothers in parts of Hamburg, but she quickly realized that the need extended to all of Germany and scaled to a countrywide operation. Since 1990, Rose Volz-Schmidt has been in charge of the family activities of the protestant church in Hamburg Niendorf, a post in which she continued while starting wellcome in 2002. She has launched a number of family support services from this position, among them trainings for working mothers and father-specific support groups. She studied social pedagogy and is a certified coach.
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