Findings from the Ontario Regional Evaluation of the Community Action Program for Children

Abstract: The Community Action Program for Children (CAPC) is a federal government initiative that funds community groups to develop local projects with the goal of supporting the development of children and strengthening families. This article describes a first round of a regional provincial-level evaluation of 30 CAPC projects in Ontario. A participatory action research approach to evaluation was used to describe the local projects and their achievements to date, and to develop a common evaluation framework for later rounds of evaluation. The evaluation identified seven categories to describe the activities and programs of projects in Ontario and ten categories of short-term outcomes through a content analysis of local evaluation reports. The evaluation found that most projects have adopted flexible, ecological and comprehensive project models centred on family support to create lasting change in the CAPC priority outcome areas.