ABSTRACT
The central State's role in the Allocation Personnalisée d'Autonomie (APA) programme is limited to the law establishing eligibility criteria and benefits, annual decrees setting the various legal parameters of the programme, and a certain degree of co-funding. This chapter presents a brief literature review on conceptual understandings of interprofessionality. It explains the research methods, which are based on an ethnographic approach. The chapter focuses on the analysis of the professional practices of medico-social caseworkers and presents the research findings. The analysis is based on ethnographic research conducted between 2010 and 2012 in seven French administrative departments as part of a collective research programme on the territorial dimensions of public policy for dependent older people. The chapter then examines nurse caseworkers' career paths and professional socialization in particular detail. The nurse caseworkers' professional socialization mainly took place in departmental administrations, specifically in services responsible for allocating assistance to vulnerable social groups.
