L'aide à domicile aux personnes âgées: an examination of systems of French home care for the elderly

<p>This paper examines the finance and service delivery methods used in France to provide home care for elderly people. It is<p><p>descriptive, and while accuracy is an objective, no claim can be made for the paper to be a comprehensive report on the<p><p>present systems, in view of the diversity of approaches found in France. As one French commentator said at a conference in Paris on co-ordination of care for the elderly (Fondation de France: March 1992), 'One Département has 60 different home help services, and 180 Communes, each with its own allocation priorities.' If one bears in mind, too, that there were 42 different financers to one home help service alone in the town of Dunkerque in 1990, the scope for diversity is almost infinite.