French SAP Approval or Departmental Authorisation: What Differs?

In French personal services, two titles govern the same area of the market — vulnerable audiences — and confusing them is the most frequent founders’ mistake: the agrément (approval), issued by the State, and the autorisation (authorisation), issued by departmental councils. The right reflex is not to pick “the easier one”, but the one the law attaches to your combination of audiences and delivery mode. Here is the map.

Two logics, two counters

The approval belongs to the labour code: it is a State quality check on activities deemed sensitive, processed by the DREETS. The authorisation belongs to the social-action code (Code de l’action sociale et des familles): it turns your structure into a medico-social service embedded in the department’s care offer, which steers and supervises home help on its territory.

This duality is no accident: since the 2015 ageing-society law, help and support to elderly and disabled people in provider mode have been unified under the authorisation regime, the approval keeping young-childcare and mandataire mode (where the customer is the employer). As François-Xavier Devetter, Florence Jany-Catrice and Thierry Ribault note in Les services à la personne (La Découverte, Repères, 2015), the sector was built by sedimentation of successive schemes — hence this two-counter architecture that disorients newcomers (see the book).

The correspondence table

	Approval (agrément)	Authorisation
Authority	State (DREETS)	Departmental council
Legal basis	Labour code	Social-action code
Activities	Care and accompaniment of children under 3 (or under 18 with a disability); vulnerable audiences in mandataire mode	Assistance, personal-vehicle driving and accompaniment of elderly and disabled people in provider mode
Duration	5 years, renewable on application	Long term (medico-social regime, fifteen years), with assessments
Framework	National approval specification	National home-help specification
Reach	The departments listed in the application	The authorising department
Counter	NOVA platform	Departmental council (social-action file)

The pivot of the table is the delivery mode. In provider mode, you employ the workers: with elderly or disabled audiences, you need the authorisation. In mandataire mode, the individual is the employer and you administer on their behalf: the approval applies. Same audience, seemingly same service — two legal regimes.

The approval: five years, a specification, a renewal to anticipate

The approval is applied for on NOVA, with a file demonstrating compliance with a national specification: human and material resources, workers’ qualifications and supervision, service continuity, complaints handling. It is issued for five years for the departments listed in the application — operating elsewhere requires an amendment request.

Renewal is anything but automatic: prepare it ahead of expiry (allow at least a quarter), with an activity report. And the approval lives under conditions: breaches of the specification or unsubmitted statistics expose you to withdrawal — and thus to the immediate stop of the covered activities.

The authorisation: entering the medico-social field

The authorisation changes your structure’s nature: you become a home-autonomy service, bound by the national specification (service plan, users’ rights, continuity, coordination with care providers) and supervised by the department. In return, it opens the core of the dependency market: interventions funded by APA (the personal-autonomy allowance) and PCH (the disability compensation benefit), paid within departmental care plans.

It is a structural choice, not one more formality: expect a genuinely medico-social organisation, documented procedures and a continuous dialogue with the department. If your project mainly targets elderly or disabled people, build it for the authorisation from day one rather than stacking regimes afterwards.

How to choose, project by project

Three typical scenarios sum up the trade-off.

You target childcare, infants included. The approval is your mandatory gate: file on NOVA with the specification evidence (qualifications, supervision, continuity), and do not open the activity before the decision. Childcare over three, meanwhile, only needs the declaration — many structures start on that segment while the approval is processed.

You target home help to elderly or disabled people, employing your workers. The departmental authorisation is what you must build — a medico-social file, not a NOVA formality. Plan generously: processing follows the department’s procedures, and your business model will hinge on access to APA and PCH care plans.

You hesitate between provider and mandataire. Mandataire (approval) is lighter to obtain, but it makes the individual the employer, with the administrative support and residual responsibility that entails on the customer’s side. Provider (authorisation) is heavier but commercially clearer. Many networks combine both — provided they maintain both files.

And where does the declaration fit?

Approval and authorisation do not replace the declaration: it is the declaration that triggers the 50% tax credit and reduced VAT for your customers, whatever your other titles — our guide to getting the SAP declaration in 2026 details the filing. In practice, a structure positioned on vulnerable audiences almost always combines declaration + approval and/or authorisation, each with its own duties (NOVA statistics, tax certificates, assessments).

Note, finally, the family resemblance with training-quality certification: a public framework, a documented review, a time-limited title and controls — readers familiar with the Qualiopi certification and its 32 indicators will recognise useful reflexes, even though the legal texts are unrelated.

Take action

Identify your audiences + delivery-mode combination, then the title or titles it imposes — that is the whole point of the file. Our guide Declaration, approval and authorisation of personal services covers the three regimes, the NOVA steps and a free ebook to structure your application.