About Us

At Gauthier Family Home Care, when we say our service is from the heart, we mean it. Why? Because we understand the struggle first hand. We’ve been there, too.

Meet the Founder, Dan Gauthier

Sometimes, it’s the heartache that fuels your second life.

It’s why Dan Gauthier, for instance, left behind a career in business and consulting to immerse himself in-home health care.

“If someone would have told me 20 years ago that I’d be in the health care business,” he says from his office on the southeast side of Grand Rapids, “I would have thought them completely crazy.”

The story of Dan’s career switch began nearly a decade ago, when a family member grew ill, and eventually required home health care. That’s when Dan got an up-close look at how the system works, and in some cases, falls short.

At the time, Dan was a sales and management executive with 35 years under his belt. He’d graduated from East Grand Rapids High School back in the 70s, then spent a year each at Aquinas College and Kalamazoo College before accepting an offer to work in the restaurant business, and eventually ended up at Universal Forest Products, a job that lasted nearly 20 years.  Dan also managed two companies in the Grand Rapids area and performed high-level contract work for both the Amway Corp. and Cascade Engineering.

He might have stayed in the business field if it weren’t for his own personal experience with home care and the problems that ensued. Eventually, he came to ask himself this: how could he use his skills and his passion so that others might avoid the same experiences his own family had endured?  “I had absolutely no idea what I was doing at first,” he acknowledges, but after a year of intensive research, founded Gauthier Family Home Care (gauthierfhc.com) in the fall of 2011.

From the start, he built a business model that encouraged caregivers to bond with the clients, and the goal of consistency was critical.  The emphasis would be on “family,” leaning on empathy and compassion as touchstones for their business model.

“We’re very persnickety about who we hire,” says Dan, noting that every candidate submits to a psychological evaluation, as well as typical background checks.  “It’s a tool that helps us create really great fits - not just send a warm body to a client’s home. We also spend a lot of time and effort on caregiver retention so that the caregivers know how valuable and appreciated they are.”  

Those who are hired become part of our Gauthier family and the company has been rewarded with a low turnover rate for years.  Happy caregivers stay and they go to work and they make the clients happy.

“You do the right thing, and good things happen.”