“We know how to anticipate heatwaves. Finding how to manage the leave of professionals who support the elderly, that’s our real problem! »launches Vincent Vincentelli, of the National Union of Home Aid, Care and Services (UNA), to summarize the staff shortage facing the 630 structures of this associative federation. “The entire sector is missing 60,000 employees”calculates Franck Nataf, president of the French Federation of Personal and Local Services (Fedesap).
“Dramatic”, ” in distress “, ” suffering “, “at the end” : this is how employers, employees and researchers describe the home help situation. And this, while the French wish to age at home, the need for support at home is expected to increase by 20% within ten years and by 60% within thirty years.
However, the alert has been raised by all the reports devoted to the sector over the past ten years, and there are many of them. The one published on March 29 by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS) evokes “situations of great tension” can lead “to keep people at home in degraded conditions, and to shift the burden onto the hospital system and families”. We are facing, writes the IGAS, “a major capacity and HR issue”.
As a result of this shortage, dependent people cannot implement their assistance plan, and providers are economically weakened. In 2022 (latest figures available), 22% of UNA members had negative equity and “70% of the others, deficit trajectories”.
But can we still be surprised that home helpers (95% are women) are turning away from a profession classified by France Strategy among “the least advantaged of all professional families”, with “a net annual salary income of 11,233 euros, almost 9,000 euros less than the average”a significant proportion of fixed-term and part-time contracts, and “strong time constraints”…?
Because the job requires availability at the end of the day to get up, wash, feed and/or put dependent people to bed. Between the two, the times judged “unproductive” are not paid. “A bit like paying a salesperson only when a customer is present in the store”underlines François-Xavier Devetter, teacher-researcher in economics at the University of Lille, author, with Annie Dussuet and Emmanuelle Puissant, ofHome help, a suffering profession (Editions de L’Atelier, 2023).
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