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This article examines documents formalising interactions between professionals and users in the context of home-based educational assistance measures provided by French administrative authorities in connection with child protection. The contractualisation of relations between public authorities and users is one of the most striking ways in which user participation is incited. The article draws upon the observation of a number of interactions as well as an analysis of various contracts binding users and an analysis of interviews of professionals and families involved in the child protection scheme. It delineates the enunciative operations in contractual writings establishing the parents’ agreement and commitment to measures of a highly injunctive nature. These discursive processes, which are specific to these new standards in public policy, prevent conflict or disagreement on the part of parents. This parental subjectivity, despite being thus deprived of a voice, emerges through silence and other non-verbal acts.