Help! helps self-employed workers in difficulty

Self-employed workers facing major financial, family, social or medical difficulties can benefit from a tailored and individualized assistance scheme called Help! Find out more here.

Supporting entrepreneurs in difficulty

Created in 2022, Help! is a service offering coordinated, accelerated and tailored care for entrepreneurs experiencing financial difficulties. It involves several organizations, including Social Security, Urssaf, the Caisse d'allocations familiales (CAF), the Caisse primaire d'assurance maladie (Cpam) and the Caisse d'assurance retraite et de la santé au travail (Carsat).

The scheme is designed to respond to the difficult situations faced by self-employed workers and to support them during these periods.

More specifically, its two main objectives are:

  • Detecting fragile situations

Help! aims to detect as early as possible the difficulties encountered by self-employed workers, who often don't know where to turn. A drop in business volume or recurring payment incidents are signals that can alert Social Security teams.

  • Support for self-employed workers on request

Help! combines the levers of Social Security action to enable workers in difficulty to implement solutions and benefit from social support.

Who's concerned?

Help! is aimed at self-employed workers and business owners (shopkeepers, craftsmen, self-employed professionals, micro-entrepreneurs) who are experiencing financial, medical, family or social difficulties.

Thanks to Help!, entrepreneurs benefit from assistance in :

  • Payment of social security contributions (payment deadlines, modulation of contributions, etc.);
  • Examining their entitlement to social benefits;
  • Access to healthcare;
  • The study of their pension rights and the steps to take.

CAF, Cpam, Urssaf and Carsat offer individualized support to self-employed workers in the areas of health, social benefits and debt collection.

How do I access the Help! system?

To take advantage of this service, you must first complete a single online questionnaire, available on the Urssaf page for your region. It takes an estimated 6 minutes to complete (this time may vary according to the options chosen).

Once the form has been completed, Urssaf forwards the application to the appropriate local or regional body for review. The latter will contact the applicant as soon as possible to review the situation. Depending on its area of expertise, the organization will work with the claimant to determine what action needs to be taken to help him or her, including resolving any problems relating to his or her business account.

The usual processing time for this procedure is around 1 month. This estimate is automatically based on the time taken to process 90% of requests processed in the last 30 days. Consequently, the actual processing time may vary.