[Educational activity and psychosocial prevention : a model of intervention.]

The authors describe the socio-economic conditions of the retired in 1980 (poverty, poor health, lack of adequate services, etc.) and explain how these conditions are related to capitalist social organization. Their analysis leads them to set down the principal goal of the community workers in regard to the elderly population as follows : contribute to the organization and to the development of conditions favorable to the mobilization of the retired and elderly workers who, as a group, have the greatest potential for changing their conditions. To attain this long-term objective, the pre-retirement clientele possess the most favorable potential, and this is why the retirement preparation intervention is defined in an educationel orientation of psycho-social prevention. Seconding to the authors, the apprenticeships showed permit the elderly to assume both personal and collective control - thereby making it possible to transform the existing conditions.