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IntroductionThe challenges of global ageing and the growing burden of chronic diseases require innovative interventions acting on health determinants like social participation. Many older adults do not have equitable opportunities to achieve full social participation, and interventions might underempower their personal and environmental resources and only reach a minority. To optimise current practices, the Accompagnement-citoyen Personnalisé d’Intégration Communautaire (APIC), an intervention demonstrated as being feasible and having positive impacts, needs further evaluation.Methods and analysisA pragmatic multicentre, prospective, two-armed, randomised controlled trial will evaluate: (1) the short-term and long-term effects of the APIC on older adults’ health, social participation, life satisfaction and healthcare services utilisation and (2) its cost-effectiveness. A total of 376 participants restricted in at least one instrumental activity of daily living and living in three large cities in the province of Quebec, Canada, will be randomly assigned to the experimental or control group using a centralised computer-generated random number sequence procedure. The experimental group will receive weekly 3-hour personalised stimulation sessions given by a trained volunteer over the first 12 months. Sessions will encourage empowerment, gradual mobilisation of personal and environmental resources and community integration. The control group will receive the publicly funded universal healthcare services available to all Quebecers. Over 2 years (baseline and 12, 18 and 24 months later), self-administered questionnaires will assess physical and mental health (primary outcome; version 2 of the 36-item Short-Form Health Survey, converted to SF-6D utility scores for quality-adjusted life years), social participation (Social Participation Scale) and life satisfaction (Life Satisfaction Index-Z). Healthcare services utilisation will be recorded and costs of each intervention calculated.Ethics and disseminationThe Research Ethics Committee of the CIUSSS Estrie – CHUS has approved the study (MP-31-2018-2424). An informed consent form will be read and signed by all study participants. Findings will be published and presented at conferences.Trial registration number NCT03161860; Pre-results.

Le métier d’agent de développement social dans le cadre d’une intervention nutritionnelle est mal connu, notamment parce qu’il est en cours de définition dans l’action. L’intention de cet article est de mieux comprendre l’agencement des sources conceptuelles de ce métier du lien social afin de contribuer à une meilleure compréhension de son émergence. À partir d’une perspective qualitative, nous avons élaboré une cartographie des différentes représentations des logiques d’intervention caractérisant le développement social dans le cadre du programme Petits cuistots-Parents en réseau. La modélisation proposée illustre l’étonnante dispersion des activités de développement social et révèle les conditions pragmatiques du métier.The social development agent profession is little known, notably because it is in the process of being defined through action. The intention of this article is to comprehend the harmonization of the conceptual sources of this social linkage profession in order to shed light on its emergence. From a qualitative perspective, a map of the various representations of the intervention logics that characterize social development, in the context of the program Petits cuistots-Parents en réseau, was elaborated. The modelization proposed illustrates the astonishing dispersion of social development activities and reveals the pragmatic conditions of the profession