The Community Action Program for Children (CAPC) provides funding to community groups that promote the healthy development of young children from birth to age 6, who face challenges that put their health at risk, such as:
- Poverty
- Teen pregnancy
- Social and geographic isolation
- Substance use
- Family violence
- Homelessness
- Food insecurity
Through this initiative, the Public Health Agency of Canada funds approximately 400 CAPC projects serving over 230,000 vulnerable children and parents/caregivers in over 3,000 communities across Canada each year.
Goals of the Community Action Program for Children
- Improve healthy child development by:
- Improving parenting skills
- Parent-child relationships
- Parent-parent relationships
- Decreasing social isolation
- Increasing child self-esteem
- Providing child-focused activities, such as preschool programs and play groups
- Promote and create partnerships within communities to:
- Actively involve the people we serve in the planning, managing, developing, delivering, and evaluation of their programs
- Strengthen community capacity
- Support vulnerable children and their families
Program Objectives
- Improve healthy child development as well as healthy families by:
- Improving parenting skills
- Parent-child relationships
- Decreasing social isolation
- Increasing child/parent self-esteem
- Providing child-focused activities, such as preschool programs and play groups
- Programs that follow the neuroscience of infant/child development
- Infant Mental Health
- Parental Mental Health
- Cultural/tradition programming
- Promote and create partnerships within communities to:
- Actively involve the people we serve in the planning, managing, developing, delivering, and evaluation of their programs
- Strengthen community partnerships and education
- Support vulnerable children and their families
Program Outcome:
- Children reaching milestones at the appropriate ages
- Children and families achieving healthy weights
- Active families
- Confident adults and children
- Children prepared to attend school
- Support for individuals experiencing abuse/family violence
- Positive parenting
- Nutrition: Families learning how to prepare healthy meals and snacks
- Budgeting: Parents learn how to budget money
- Decrease the number of individuals experiencing food insecurity
Target Population:
- Low income
- Indigenous
- Non-Indigenous
- All families with children 0-6 years
Programming/Services offered:
- Parenting
- Child development
- Advocacy
- Playgroups
- Tummy Time
- Children’s Cooking
- Adult Cooking
- School preparedness
- Child and parent supports
- Cultural events
- Tradition events
- Special events/gathering: Halloween, Christmas Easter etc.
- Emergency food
- Emergency baby supplies such as diapers, wipes, formula
