The “Dépasse” action research (Experimental approach to accompany, support and care for children), analyzes the systems that support “double vulnerable” children, that is to say entrusted to child welfare and in a situation of disability. This study reveals the fragility of these systems which rely essentially on committed professionals (yet exhausted by institutional precariousness) and proposes several avenues for changing public policies.
“Statistical invisibility, institutional compartmentalization, fragmentation of responsibilities, discontinuities of paths and responses frequently constructed urgently or by default” : the children say “ with double vulnerability »which relate to both child protection and the field of disability, often experience chaotic paths (marked by successive placements, exclusions, breakdowns in care, educational breakdowns, etc.) which put to the test public action frameworks historically organized by sectors or by specialized systems.
What forms of support can we offer these children? With what frameworks and what connections between child protection and medico-social? The “Dépasse” project (Experimental approach to accompany, support and care for children) is based on these questions. Its unique character involves meeting reality, in a multi-level approach (the public, teams of professionals, associations and public policies). Under the coordination of the Secular Association for Education, Training, Prevention and Autonomy (ALEFPA), “an association serving children, as well as adults, in situations of physical, social or age vulnerability”the study is carried out by two researchers from the University of Lille, specialists in organizations, innovation and social and medico-social action, Christel Beaucourt and Laëtitia Roux.
What lessons?
The 313-page report highlights a diversity of systems which, in the territories, are experimenting with new forms of support to meet the needs of young people with dual vulnerabilities:
- hybrid systems that go beyond traditional boundaries between sectors and combine educational support, psychological and psychiatric care, social support, work with families and prevention actions;
- a stable, secure and sustainable framework where professionals cooperate to ensure the continuity of the link;
- systems and teams that constantly adapt. Crises and difficulties encountered become opportunities for collective reflection and improvement of practices.
- well-identified systems, closely linked to the territorial ecosystem.
However, the study reveals the fragility of these systems which rely essentially on committed professionals, yet exhausted by institutional precariousness. « Experimentation then appears to be a pragmatic response. But when it continues over time, it can become a lasting regime of uncertainty. On a financial level, sustainability is often based on a stack of financing and on compensation mechanisms between budget lines. It is based on an economy of invisible costs: interinstitutional coordination, crisis management, collective regulation time, territorial networking work. write in particular the researchers who carried out this study, Christel Beaucourt and Laëtitia Roux.
Institutional vulnerabilities, which, moreover, resonate with those of children. “They do not add up, they potentiate themselves. These are not just difficult children, facing sometimes stiff institutions, but a system where weaknesses respond to each other and amplify. There is a sort of vicious circle where the child reveals the faults of the system, a system which only aggravates the child’s difficulties. observes Christel Beaucourt.
Decompartmentalize
This work therefore proposes several avenues for changing public policies:
- recognize situations of double vulnerability as a cross-cutting issue involving child protection, disability, mental health and education and decompartmentalize care;
- formally recognize hybrid systems and stabilize their legal framework;
- finance the real work of the teams: coordination, cooperation, composure and collective regulation;
- supporting organizations: strengthening reflective dynamics, the formalization of learning and the capacity of management organizations to manage hybridization over time.
Acute revealer of the structural fragilities of social policies
“Children with double vulnerability appear less as a ‘separate’ audience than as a particularly acute revealer of unthoughts, implicit trade-offs and the structural fragilities of social, medico-social and health policies”notes the summary of the report. The Dépasse report is part of this context. “It aims neither to produce an additional inventory of gaps and failures, nor to promote solutions or models presented as innovative. Its ambition is more structuring: to analyze what the journeys of children with dual vulnerabilities reveal about the real functioning of public policies, legal frameworks and organizations; understand how complexity is today absorbed, displaced or contained by actors and systems; and question the conditions in which public action manages to hold, often at the cost of strong tensions, without lastingly transforming itself”.
This report must now guide public policies, its authors hope. Phase 2 of the Dépasse project will look more precisely at governance, the duration of support and will evaluate impact measures in the mobile intervention and support service in Marne, the permanent accommodation system in Vendée and the social children’s home L’Orée-des-Champs in Yonne. The results are expected by summer 2027.
Le projet Dépasse, présenté par l’ALEFPA, a été l’un des lauréats de l’appel à projets de 2024 de la Caisse nationale de solidarité pour l'autonomie (CNSA), « expérimenter pour accompagner l’évolution de l’offre médico-sociale et l’adaptation des réponses aux besoins des personnes », qui portait sur l’évolution de l’offre médico-sociale et l’adaptation des réponses aux besoins des personnes. Son objectif est de soutenir des expérimentations visant à accompagner l’évolution et la transformation de l’offre médico-sociale par l’émergence de modèles d’action, de démarches ou de dispositifs innovants favorables à la qualité des accompagnements et à l’effectivité des droits des personnes concernée.
Equipe projet
Elsa Kowalczuk, Directrice adjointe Transformation de l’offre et droits des personnes, ALEFPA
Christel Beaucourt, Professeure des universités, IAE Lille, Université de Lille,
Laëtitia Roux, Maître de Conférences HDR, IAE Lille, Université de Lille,
Aurélie Beaugency, consultante au sein du cabinet Ellyx,
Defne Guvenc, consultante au sein du cabinet Ellyx.
To find out more: Exceeds Report – phase 1.
