“To age well is to stay upright” : the former planning commissioner, Jean-Baptiste de Foucauld, 79, made the audience laugh, Tuesday, October 11. Not a chair had been provided for the approximately 200 people invited to the ministry for the launch of the National Council for Refoundation (CNR) devoted to “aging well”. The audience also smiled upon hearing Jean-Christophe Combe: “We exhaust the collective intelligence to tirelessly make the same observations without going to the solutionshas observed the Minister of Solidarity, Autonomy and People with Disabilities. Since 2018, 18 reports and 372 proposals have been produced on the subject [du grand âge]. » « The time is no longer for observations but for the implementation of solutions. Operational proposals, the government will put some on the table”, he promised. Under the incredulous gaze of part of the public.
After the announcement, at the end of August, by the government of the holding of a CNR on “ageing well”, not one professional in the sector considered that a new major debate of this type was a necessity. “What good is this new thing fallen from Jupiter? »asked Jérôme Guedj, socialist deputy of Essonne and specialist in these files, for whom this CNR looks like a“a dilatory tactic”. Not to mention the Cassandres for which what will come out of the CNR “is known in advance, since all the questions have been seen and arbitrated”. “The major consultation in 2018 resulted in the report by Dominique Libaultsubmitted in March 2019, which refers, observes an expert. The Minister could have drawn up a “old age” roadmap in the fall with a strategy for the next five years. »
Mr. Combe, who will report the conclusions of the CNR in May 2023, thinks quite the opposite. He explains that he “beaten so that “ageing well” is in the CNR”. At the Elysée, it is assured, on the contrary, that the demographic transition was from the start among the themes chosen by the CNR, decided by the President of the Republic. “The method of getting the actors and people on the ground to take ownership of the measures is more powerful than a plan, or even a small or large law imposed from above”, explains the minister.
Three construction sites
In fact, despite their conviction that the government “try to procrastinate” on the subject, the actors have no choice but to lend themselves to the game of the great debate. The CNR appears to them as the last chance to put the theme of aging on the agenda of the Head of State. “This is the last push to make our proposals operational”, valued Myriam El Khomri. Author of a report on the attractiveness of old-age professions submitted to the government in October 2019, François Hollande’s former labor minister agreed to co-lead one of the three CNR projects: that devoted to the “revaluation of professions”. She will co-host workshops in three departments with Dafna Mouchenik, director of a home help service. They will focus on the working conditions of home helpers, on training for old age professions and on the reduction of accidents at work.
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