Council tax (taxe d’habitation) reduction

You can get a reduction on your taxe d’habitation if your child holds a disability card (carte d’invalidité). The amount is not huge (around 10%), but it’s better than nothing!

How?

• 1/ Fill in form CERFA 1206 GD-SD and send it to your tax office together with a copy of the disability card.
• 2/ This exemption is then subject to a “decision by the local authorities”, which means it must be voted by your town council. So it is up to you to submit this proposal to your town council before 31 December of the current year.

Detailed explanations here (in French). Worth a try!

CESU: partial exemption from employer contributions

As a private employer (e.g. of a childminder or carer), you can be exempted from employer social security contributions if your child under 20 has a disability rate of at least 80%, receives the AEEH supplement (Allocation d’Éducation de l’Enfant Handicapé) or the PCH (Prestation de Compensation du Handicap, child version).

Note that this only covers social security contributions; other employer contributions are still due.

How? Simply provide the required supporting documents. More information on the CESU URSSAF website (in French).

Buying equipment for less

The association Un pas vers l’autonomie came up with a brilliant way to bring down the price of medical equipment. They set up a partnership with suppliers to whom they send your quotes in order to get fairer prices. Thanks to this centralisation, members of the association can get preferential rates throughout France. Medical bed, mattress, nappies, bathroom adaptations, walker, medical products, etc.

An example of a negotiation: a bed listed at €7,500 dropped to €4,650 (minus €1,030 reimbursed by social security).

Contact them through their Facebook page! Their idea is simply brilliant!!

Donated days off

Law no. 2014-459 of 9 May 2014 added to the French Labour Code the possibility for employees to donate days off to a colleague whose child is seriously ill.

This anonymous donation is made with the employer’s agreement. The beneficiary is an employee of the company who looks after a child under 20 with an illness, a disability or who has had a particularly serious accident requiring constant presence and demanding care.

In other words, if your colleagues are kind and you need time off for an operation or intensive rehabilitation, there is a way to take time off while keeping your salary!

Getting a school assistant (AVS) for the new school year: not so simple…

Even if you prepare your application for a school assistant (AVS) well in advance, there is a good chance you will be disappointed on your little one’s first day of school!

In our case, we found out by email at 10 pm the night before school started that Enora would not have an AVS after all… Don’t let it go, otherwise nobody will be assigned before the autumn half-term!

Here is an action plan to win the game.

• 1. First, contact the enseignant référent (the teacher in charge of following pupils with disabilities).



• 2. Call the Ministry of Education’s Aide Handicap École helpline on 0810 55 55 00. They help families by checking the progress of their file with the relevant education authority (rectorat). For us, they were very effective the day before school started!

• 3. Contact the rectorat directly. To do so, search “organigramme DPAE” on Google to find the contacts for your local education authority. Then find the contact for DPAE4, the administrative department that handles the assignment, employment contracts and schedules of non-permanent staff such as AVS.

  For families in Toulouse, it is worth always copying the GISH (GROUPEMENT INTERASSOCIATIF SCOLARISATION ET HANDICAP) into the emails you send to the rectorat: it gives weight to your request, because the GISH is a recognised group, and it lets the GISH follow the situation and step in if needed: gish.31@laposte.net.

• 4. If these contacts lead nowhere, contact the ASH inspector (Adaptation Scolaire et Scolarisation des Élèves Handicapés): a friend of a friend who works at the rectorat told us that the most effective thing is to threaten to alert the press because it is a very sensitive issue!

• 5. If no AVS has been recruited, you can send a formal notice to the education inspectorate (template letter to adapt here): the French education system has an obligation of result regarding the provision of AVS to pupils with disabilities.

• 6. It is also possible to go to the administrative court (référé liberté, an urgent procedure) if the child with a disability is left out of school for lack of an AVS.

Good to know (from experience):

• The school is obliged to take your child if you ask, whether or not an AVS has been assigned. On the first day of school, Enora had no AVS. We did not send her to school, because we know teachers already have a lot on their plate welcoming the little ones. However, we told the head teacher that, AVS or not, we would bring Enora to school 2 days later. Which we did, pointing out that Enora’s safety was their responsibility and that she needed someone for all her movements. Believe it or not, 2 hours later the enseignant référent called me, sounding panicked, to say that a temporary AVS had been assigned urgently and would be in class the next day…
• If the rectorat tells you they have no candidates in your area (which is what happened to us), you can suggest proposing candidates to them. In our case, we used word of mouth in our village and got 4 CVs from people keen to be Enora’s AVS! We passed them on to the rectorat.

School lunches: not so simple…

Lunchtime and after-school care are considered “extracurricular” and are now the responsibility of the town council (mairie). So it is up to the council to recruit someone to accompany your child if necessary. If your child goes to school and you apply for school lunches, the application cannot be refused, otherwise it is discrimination (school lunches cannot be reserved for children who walk!).

In practice, local budgets are increasingly tight, which does not make it easy for councils. Fortunately, the CAF (family allowance fund) subsidises access to extracurricular activities for children with disabilities. Councils don’t always know this, so tell them! It is up to them to submit the application.

So why do some children keep their AVS at lunchtime? Because the MDPH (local disability office) sometimes grants extracurricular hours in the AVS decision, and the rectorat, in its great kindness, agrees that the AVS can work during that time. That’s great, but it is a “favour” and not compulsory.

Reimbursement of school transport costs

The Conseil Général (département council) where you live is required to cover home–school transport costs if you ask. You need to show that your child is not able to use public transport. Your child must also be attending a mainstream school (state or private), primary or secondary. You will find the official text here (in French).

So you could, for example, arrange for a taxi company to take your child to and from school every day. Interesting, isn’t it?