When a medical-social establishment must manage the accommodation of dependent elderly people, coordinate specialized educational services for children, and deploy home care teams across an entire department, the question of operational coherence quickly arises. The Office of Social Hygiene of Lorraine (OHS) has been managing this coordination since its creation in 1920, with a network that today covers very different sectors in the Meurthe-et-Moselle territory.
OHS Lorraine and the takeover of Amapa: what home care changes
The OHS has long been identified as a player in institutional support. Motor education centers, medical-educational institutes, nursing homes, social centers: its structures are located from Flavigny-sur-Moselle to Briey, passing through Nancy and Lunéville. This network can be found in most directories of the medical-social sector in Lorraine.
The takeover of Amapa, a structure employing around 4,500 staff in the field of personal care, marked a turning point. The OHS now also operates at home, which changes the very nature of its organization. We are no longer just talking about beds and places in institutions, but about intervention schedules at individuals’ homes, coordination between home helpers and medical teams, and territorial logistics.
This evolution illustrates well the expertise of OHS Lorraine in its ability to absorb new areas without losing the coherence of its historical missions.
OHS Solutions: digital platform and social support
We often hear about the “digital shift” in the medical-social sector, but concrete tools remain rare. The OHS has developed OHS Solutions, presented as a platform intended for elderly, disabled, or sick individuals, usable at home as well as in institutions.
The idea is not to replace human support. OHS Solutions combines field intervention and digital autonomy tools, which requires a dual skill set: training teams in digital tools and adapting interfaces for audiences that are farthest from these uses.
The OHS also participates in the dissemination of Mon espace santé to potentially digitally excluded audiences. This digital mediation work in health addresses a national issue, but it takes on a concrete dimension when it targets residents of nursing homes or families followed by a SESSAD.
What this platform changes on the ground
For professionals, the centralization of information reduces back-and-forth between services. For users, access to a shared digital space facilitates the tracking of care pathways, especially when several stakeholders (educator, doctor, home helper) are involved with the same person.
Feedback varies on this point depending on the audiences and establishments, but the logic of coordination remains the common thread.
OHS support sectors: childhood, disability, elderly
What distinguishes the OHS from many regional players is the coexistence of very different sectors within the same association. Under the same legal roof, you can find:
- SESSAD (Special Education and Home Care Services) attached to the motor education centers of Flavigny-sur-Moselle and the Briey area, which support disabled children in their schooling
- IME (Medical-Educational Institutes) in Flavigny and at the Terrasses de Mehon in Lunéville, dedicated to schooling in specialized institutions for individuals with intellectual disabilities
- ITEP (Therapeutic, Educational, and Pedagogical Institutes) in Briey and Lunéville, for children with behavioral disorders
- Nursing homes, social centers (Saint-Michel in Saint-Max, Beauregard in Nancy), and social action services without accommodation
This diversity poses heavy management constraints. Each sector responds to distinct regulations, funding, and quality standards. The HAS evaluates these establishments based on criteria of well-being and personalization of the support project, which forces the OHS to maintain a consistent level of requirement across very varied professions.
Employment and recruitment OHS in Meurthe-et-Moselle
With the takeover of Amapa and all its establishments, the OHS is among the significant employers in the social sector in Lorraine. Job offers cover a wide spectrum: nursing assistants, specialized educators, home helpers, psychomotor therapists, health managers.
Recruitment in the medical-social sector remains tense throughout France, and Meurthe-et-Moselle is no exception. The OHS must attract profiles for positions sometimes located in rural municipalities (Flavigny-sur-Moselle, Val de Briey), far from the urban employment hubs of Nancy or Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy.
What can make a difference for a candidate
Working in a multi-sector structure opens up possibilities for internal mobility that a small independent establishment cannot offer. An educator in an ITEP can consider a transition to a SESSAD or a social center without changing employers. This transversality, linked to the size of the association, constitutes a concrete argument against competition in the job market.
Founded in 1920 by Dean Jacques Parisot and recognized as a public utility since 1923, the OHS has traversed a century by adapting its responses to the health and social needs of the Lorraine territory. Its recent shift towards home care and digital health extends missions that have continuously expanded since the first actions against social diseases.
The strength of this model lies in its ability to bring together professions and audiences that most structures treat separately.
