Faxing the MDPH and the département council: what actually gets through

Short answer: an MDPH application, a personalised autonomy allowance (APA) claim or a residential care social assistance file must never be filed by fax — the Cerfa 15692 form and its accompanying medical certificate (Cerfa 15695) go through the online channel (the MDPH en ligne e-service, now open in most départements) or by post to the Maison départementale des personnes handicapées. Between filing and the CDAPH's decision, however, four to eight months often pass, punctuated by letters about missing documents, renewals about to lapse and chasing from care facilities. That is where the fax comes back into service: an APA department asking for a tax assessment notice, a multidisciplinary team waiting on a speech therapy report, a care home pushing for the ASH, a RSA department suspending an entitlement. Golden rule: a fax does not file a département-level application, it completes a file that is already registered — and it always goes alongside the official channel.

Who decides what in a département

For the user, the word "département" covers at least four separate front desks, which share neither premises, nor processing times, nor fax numbers. Confusing them costs weeks.

The MDPH is a public interest grouping created by the Act of 11 February 2005 on equal rights and opportunities for people with disabilities. It is therefore not simply a service of the département council: it has its own secretariat, its own multidisciplinary team, and a commission — the CDAPH — that rules on cases. The APA and the ASH, by contrast, come directly under the département, with different internal circuits (often through a territorial branch or a "maison des solidarités").

The practical upshot: a fax sent to the département council's switchboard marked "for the MDPH" may well end up nowhere. You have to target the department, not the institution. Our article on how to find the right fax number for a government body sets out the verification method; it applies word for word here.

What never goes by fax

Before hunting for a number, you have to accept three prohibitions. They stem not from administrative zeal but from specific legal texts.

The MDPH application itself. The single application form (Cerfa 1569201) must be signed and accompanied by the medical certificate (Cerfa 1569501) dated less than twelve months earlier, proof of identity and proof of address. The decree of 5 May 2017 made this single form mandatory nationwide. A faxed medical certificate is systematically refused: the MDPH's doctor needs a document legible in greyscale, with the boxes ticked and the annexes included (ophthalmological and auditory sections), and a fax degrades this to the point where some ticks become unusable.

The APA claim. The national form (Cerfa 16301) and its supporting documents — tax assessment notice, proof of address, bank details — trigger a statutory two-month deadline from the date the complete file is registered, after which the APA is deemed granted at the minimum flat-rate amount (Article L. 232-14 of the Social Action and Families Code). Sending it by fax does not start that clock, because the file is not "registered" until the signed original has been received.

The ASH claim. It is processed by the CCAS of the municipality of residence, which forwards it to the département, together with a maintenance obligation section to be completed by the children. This paper/digital circuit has no place for the fax.

For everything else, the fax retains real usefulness — and that is the heart of the matter.

The six situations where a fax genuinely unblocks things

1. The missing-documents letter

This is use case number one. The MDPH or the APA department writes to you: "your file is incomplete, please send us the following document within fifteen days." That letter carries a file number, sometimes an "individual" number, and almost always a fax number in its header or footer. Replying by fax the same day, with the reference in large characters on the cover sheet, keeps the file from being closed without further action. Our fax cover sheet generator includes the fields that case officers expect.

2. The renewal about to lapse

An AAH or a PCH granted for two years, an inclusive mobility parking card reaching its expiry date, a SESSAD placement to be renewed: the renewal file must be filed several months before the entitlement ends. When you have been caught short, the filing receipt counts as much as the filing itself. A fax stating "renewal application filed on DD/MM, file no. X, entitlement expiring DD/MM" allows the MDPH to extend the entitlement administratively, or the facility to accept a provisional continuation.

3. Additional medical documents requested by the multidisciplinary team

A speech therapy assessment, a hospital discharge summary, an occupational therapy report, a physiotherapy report. These documents are often held by a healthcare professional who does have a fax machine. The practitioner can fax them directly to the MDPH's doctor — a circuit that is still very much alive, provided the fax is addressed by name ("for the attention of the coordinating physician").

4. The mandatory prior administrative appeal (RAPO)

Since the decree of 19 February 2018, any challenge to a CDAPH decision must first go through a RAPO sent to the MDPH within two months of notification, before any referral to the social division of the judicial court. The RAPO itself must be written and reasoned; registered post is the recommended route. But when the deadline falls in two days' time, a fax backed up by a registered letter posted the same day is the reflex that saves the day. The reasoning on the evidential value of a faxed document is the same as the one we set out in our article on the fax as evidence before a judge.

5. The APA emergency

Article L. 232-12 of the Social Action and Families Code provides for an emergency APA: where a medical or social situation warrants immediate assistance, the president of the département council awards a flat-rate amount on a provisional basis within fifteen days. These requests almost always go through a professional — a hospital department, a social worker, a home care service — and the fax remains one of the channels used to send the referral and the medical certificate justifying the emergency.

6. Hospital discharges

A return home with a care plan to be put together in forty-eight hours, a care home placement to be secured: hospital social workers operate just-in-time with the département's medico-social teams. Many hospital social services still use the fax to send a complete file to the territorial branch, because it is traceable, immediate, and requires no account to be created.

Preparing a transmission that will actually be read

A medico-social file is, by nature, bulky and poorly digitised: scans of photocopies, stapled documents, double-sided annexes. That is exactly the kind of fax that arrives illegible.

Three precautions change everything.

Scan properly. A compact A4 flatbed scanner gives far better results than a smartphone photo taken on a kitchen table, especially for the tables and tick boxes on a medical certificate. Failing that, photograph the document flat, in daylight, with no shadow falling across it.

Don't fax more than necessary. A forty-page fax takes twenty minutes to go through and ties up the department's line. Send only the document requested, and keep the rest for the paper file. If you need to combine several supporting documents into a single transmission, our tool for assembling a PDF file bundle puts them in order without installing any software.

Protect the original. Tax assessment notices, family record books, pension award letters: a punched plastic sleeve and a lever arch file with dividers are enough to avoid losing documents you will be asked for again in six months. Medico-social files have long lives: a PCH gets renewed, an APA gets reassessed, an ASH gets reviewed.

When it comes to cutting down bulk, a document punch-stamp is of no use here — on the other hand, a long-reach stapler or a set of expanding files saves real time when putting together a renewal file with twelve separate documents to gather before scanning.

Finding the fax number of the right MDPH

There is no single national directory of MDPH fax numbers. Four reliable sources, in this order:

1. The letter you received. Header, footer, or side panel. This is the most reliable source, because it is up to date as of the letter's date and corresponds to the department writing to you.
2. The département council's website, under "autonomie", "solidarités" or "handicap". Contact details for territorial branches appear there, sometimes in a PDF contact list.
3. The CNSA (Caisse nationale de solidarité pour l'autonomie, National Solidarity Fund for Autonomy) publishes a directory of MDPHs with phone numbers and addresses; fax numbers are patchy but sometimes present.
4. The MDPH en ligne e-service (mdphenligne.cnsa.fr): where it is open in your département, it displays full contact details for the processing department — and it often makes the fax unnecessary for follow-up, since you can see the progress of your file.

Our directory of public fax numbers lists French government services and their verified contact details; MDPHs appear there whenever the département publishes an active fax number.

Before sending anything, make a thirty-second call to the switchboard: "is the APA department's fax still working?" Many départements switched off their fax machines when they migrated their phone systems, without removing the number from documents printed back in 2019.

Keeping usable proof

A fax is only worth something if you can show what was sent, when, and to which number. Three items to keep together:

• the transmission report (date, time, number dialled, number of pages, "OK" status);
• the exact PDF that was sent, cover sheet included;
• evidence of the postal duplicate: registered post receipt, or a copy of the ordinary letter with its date.

For deadlines with real stakes — the two-month RAPO, the two-month appeal window before the social division, fifteen days to complete a file — it is this trio that will stand up before a department or a judge. The details of record-keeping are covered in our article on archiving transmission receipts.

Frequently asked questions

Can the MDPH refuse a document received by fax?

Yes for documents that must be originals or signed: the application form, the medical certificate, a sworn statement. No, in practice, for supplementary supporting documents — tax assessment notices, paramedical reports, employer certificates — provided the fax is legible and carries the file number. When in doubt, fax it then post it: the fax meets the deadline, the letter puts the form right.

What is the MDPH's statutory response time?

Four months from receipt of the complete file. Beyond that, silence amounts to an implicit rejection, which opens the way to a RAPO and then to litigation. In practice, the average processing times published by the CNSA remain highly variable from one département to another, from two to more than eight months depending on the area and the benefit.

Is the fax useful for the RSA?

Only marginally. RSA claims are processed by the CAF, the MSA, the CCAS or an approved body, and payment is handled by the CAF or the MSA. The fax is mainly used to send a document to a département integration service when an entitlement has been suspended. The CAF/MSA circuit is covered separately in our article on faxing the CAF or the MSA.

I have neither a fax machine nor a printer: what do I do?

Sending from a computer or a phone is enough: you upload the PDF and the service dials for you. If you have no scanner, a physical walk-in point is still an option — the solutions are listed in where to send a fax without a fax machine in France, and France Services staff can help you put your file together.

Should I fax head office or the territorial branch?

Always the branch that holds your file. Départements divide their social action work into territorial units (maisons des solidarités, districts, delegations). Head office will redirect it, but with several days' delay — fatal when you have forty-eight hours left.

In summary

• Never by fax: the MDPH application (Cerfa 15692 + medical certificate 15695), the APA claim (Cerfa 16301), the ASH claim. These files require the signed original.
• Useful by fax: missing documents requested by letter, a renewal about to lapse, a medical report sent by a practitioner, a RAPO right on the deadline, an emergency APA referral, a hospital discharge.
• Target the department, not the institution: the MDPH, the APA department, the social assistance department and the integration department have different circuits and different numbers.
• Check the number before sending: many département fax lines were cut during phone system migrations, without printed documents being updated.
• Three deadlines to know: four months for an MDPH response, two months for APA processing, two months for a RAPO after notification.
• Always keep the transmission report, the PDF you sent and proof of the postal duplicate — it is the combination that constitutes evidence, not the fax alone.