How to promote participation of social services users? A competence-based approach[Dans quelles mesures favoriser la participation des usagers des services sociaux ? Une approche par les compétences]

The starting point of this research lies in the following question: why do some people relinquish their rights to apply for social benefits? We propose to identify the competences that the user has to deploy for a " successful " interaction with caseworkers, and the underlying resources the user has to integrate. Using a qualitative approach based on field observation and interviews with users of a Family benefice department (CAF), we show that the inability of some users to use " basic " competencies prevents them from communicating efficiently with CAF. Users may not have access to the minimum threshold of necessary resources, over which the service provider has no control. Other users may have the basic competencies to interact with the caseworkers, but may lack " auxiliary " competencies and thus remain dependant on the caseworkers. The objective of the service provider is therefore to help the user to become fully autonomous. From a managerial standpoint, our results confirm the service provider's role in supporting users (Breidbach et al., 2016). The technical expertise of case workers and the choice of reception arrangements according to the competencies of users permit the latter to play a more active role. These results call for the recognition of careers in reception and the design of a reception policy based on the characteristics and the competencies of users.