The year, in detail
The programme is the same shape every time. That is deliberate. A designed sequence run many times is more reliable than something improvised for each family, and it means the effort goes where it matters rather than into reinventing the process.
It runs for twelve months and it covers everyone in the household. The move is rarely hardest on the person who chose it.
01 Before you arrive
A conversation with everyone who is moving
Not a briefing. A conversation, and ideally with the whole family in the room. What each of you is leaving, what you are quietly worried about, what a good Saturday would look like a year from now. Partners and teenagers usually have the sharpest answers and are usually asked last.
02 Month one
How the island actually works
Some of it is practical: where things are, who to ring, what nobody tells you. Most of it is not on any list. Who knows whom, why a thing happens in one place and not another, and which door is worth knocking on. Alongside that, three to five deliberate introductions chosen for you rather than for my convenience.
03 Months two to six
The rest of the family
This is where relocations are won or lost. A partner into work, study or something worth doing. Children into activities where they meet people outside their class. And regular check-ins with the family, because the person with the job is usually the last to notice things are not working at home.
04 Months six to twelve
From introduced to belonging
The change you are looking for is when the invitations start arriving without me. You have your own people, your own routines, your own reasons to be somewhere on a Tuesday evening. At that point my job is to get out of the way.
How the programme runs
The programme is the same twelve month arc for every family. It was designed once and it runs many times, which is what keeps it consistent rather than depending on whoever happens to be available. It is delivered one to one.
You will not be the only one
Families going through the programme at the same time are introduced to each other. That is not an afterthought. Newcomers befriending other newcomers is often the most durable connection anyone makes here, because everyone involved is at the same point and nobody has thirty years of prior friendships to return to. Two families arriving into an established island have a much easier job than one family arriving alone.
As the number of families grows, more of the programme will be run as a group. For now it is delivered one to one, with those introductions made deliberately as they become useful.
What I do not do
I am not a lawyer, an estate agent or a removals firm, and I do not duplicate what Locate Guernsey already provides free of charge. Those services get you to the island. I am concerned with the year that follows, which nobody else is paid to care about.
The part that is never systematised
The part that is never systematised is who you meet. Every introduction is chosen for the specific family, by someone who has spent twenty years knowing who is who on this island. That is the actual product. Everything else is scaffolding built to protect it.