A service under pressure
Since 1 January 2023, financial intermediation of child support is set up automatically for every new court decision: parents no longer have to ask for it. Between 30% and 40% of child support payments go unpaid in France, and the Aripa steps in as of right to collect from the debtor parent. The result is a volume of files that has grown massively and continuously, with an average approval time of around 38 days nationally and chronic backlogs on the more complex cases.
The CAF de Saône-et-Loire runs one of these Aripa units: 49 people, the same reforms, the same inflow. What differs is how the team works.
How it works
The team started with an OpenDecide scan, a shared, evidence-based read of how it actually operated day to day. From there it ran its own improvement cycles on the platform: clarifying who owns what, removing the friction in the file-handling chain, and making the operating standard explicit rather than tacit. Over 11 months, effectiveness rose by 24% and the service posted a 5% operational gain.
Delays compared with the national network
Bars scaled within each group. National benchmarks: Cour des comptes, Sécurité sociale 2025.
For a creditor parent, that gap is not a statistic. It is the difference between a support payment secured in a matter of days and a file waiting in a queue while the household budget does not.
Holding the standard
The point is not a one-off performance spike. It is a way of working the team owns and can sustain as volumes keep rising, and that other services can pick up in turn.
Public service excellence is measured where it lands: in how quickly a family gets what it is owed.