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?

In various neighbourhoods in Amsterdam tensions between their inhabitants are felt. Inhabitants are irritated by the behaviour of youths, polluted streets and nuisance from their neighbours. They are incapable or do not dare to address each other about this and to solve their problems by themselves. Instead they look towards the authorities for help, which are dealing with insufficient capacity. As a consequence it is getting harder and harder to address and correct each other. Small problems and conflicts develop into big and complex issues.
Amsterdam authorities use various policy tools, pointed at both increasing its own decisiveness and credibility and at mobilizing civilians. Those policies are the Bully-approach, Neighbourhood Safety Teams, Self-protective Neighbourhoods and stimulation of civic initiatives. The reality is stubborn, but also shows bottom-up examples which function succesfully and independently from government approaches and programs. In these examples civic force plays an important role.
These examples, knowledge and persons who play key roles can be brought together and are useful in the search for solutions of problems in other situations. This is most effective when civilians attack issues and are integrated with worthy instruments from the authorities. This will gradually enable a reconstruction of the current system and a social reacquisition of neighbourhoods. In this social ‘football ‘ team civilians would be the strikers, backed up by a strong and professional governmental midfield. This article consecutively defines the current problem, regards the governmental instruments, bottom-up initiatives. It ends up with the suggestion for the construction of a good teamplay between policy tools en bottom up initiatives.

Neighbourhood mediation has been practiced more than fifteen years in the Netherlands. In 2010 there was neighbourhood mediation in 160 municipalities. More than 7000 cases were handled. Volunteer mediators try to break through communication blockades and teach their neighbours to make agreements. They are successful in two thirds of the cases. This means that about 20.000 directly involved family members are participating in successful cases. The authors discuss some conditions, results and the central principles of Dutch neighbourhood mediation: communication on an equal basis, impartiality, responsibility to solve conflicts, autonomous action and the enhancement of security and quality of life.