PRADO (Programmes d’accompagnement du retour à domicile après hospitalisation) is a program that aims to shorten the length of hospital stays to meet the needs of patients who wish to return home sooner. It is means of reducing the average hospital stay, in order to improve cost efficiency in hospitals and the quality of overall patient care.

PRADO was implemented in 2010. It relies on:

Community centres provide local and a place for people belonging to different generations and social categories to meet. They have been promoting the development of social and family links by supporting resident-initiated community projects, organizing events, social activities and providing services with a social purpose since 1971. There is a special focus on vulnerable groups and favoring social diversity.

The Family Branch mediation service was created in 1991. In addition a mediator has been assigned to each of the 102 Regional Family Allowances Offices since 2012.

An external independent mediator will be appointed by the National Fund for Family Allowances (Caisse nationale des allocations familiales (CNAF)) in 2016.

In cases where there is a lack of understanding or difficulties accessing rights, the mediation service ensures a fair outcome that is clearly understood by users.

The Family Allowances Fund offers a complete package to separated parents which combines:

The move by the Family Department to establish a policy for young people that is clearer, more coherent, better adapted to real needs and aligned with the actions of all stakeholders involved in this area, has resulted in the implementation of innovation methods derived from “design thinking”.

For the past 10 years the Family Allowances Fund (Caisses d’allocations familiales (CAF)) have been developing and improving paperless services for internet users (caf.fr): on-line benefit applications, access to and monitoring of personal files, electronic mail, access to child-care facilities, entitlement simulation tools, service provider porting to smartphones and tablets, automation of information exchange with partners.

The Family Branch is at the heart of solidarity policies and provides support for the most vulnerable individuals. Its organisation and service delivery prioritize access to entitlements – now a key public policy issue.

In 2014 the Family branch implemented a new service with a renewed focus on identifying and accessing available entitlements and services called the “entitlement meeting”.

For two days and a night (36 hours non-stop), 17 teams (70 people in all) from the public sector and with volunteer staff from Family Allowances Fund Offices worked on (open) data made available by the Family Allowances Fund to discover how this data could be used for the benefit of the public.

This collective intelligence exercise, which was carried out non-stop under time constraints, delivered high-quality results and met a wide variety of objectives.

The Insurance Scheme for the Self-Employed (RSI) handles the compulsory coverage of health, maternity, disability, death, old-age and survivors’ insurance for non-agricultural self-employed workers conducting their activities in France. It is responsible for the collection of statutory social security contributions.