5.2 Description Of The Initiative

The FII-ON is a community-based, participatory process, promoting change through concerted action based on population health principles and aiming toward the implementation of supportive and protective public policies that enable father involvement as a condition of healthy child development. The Initiative stemmed from a realization among Health Canada staff that in many of the region's Community Action Program for Children (CAPC) projects, the involvement of fathers was minimal or absent. Using CAPC projects as gateways for community mobilization, the FII-ON dovetails with the Ontario CAPC approach, emphasizing community mobilization and the building of community capacity to detect and remove systematic barriers and create favourable conditions for father involvement through CAPC or other parallel actions. From the outset, this initiative has been grounded in the population health approach, seeking to develop the capacity within communities to reframe issues and refocus intervention at the level of determinants.

In the first phase of the FII-ON, conducted in 1997/98, a review of the literature on father involvement and associated risk and support factors, obstacles and opportunities was conducted. In the second phase, 14 communities with CAPC or Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program (CPNP) projects, that had expressed interest in fathering issues, participated in a series of quantitative and qualitative surveys with community agencies and groups of fathers and mothers. The results of this phase led to the mobilization of eight local initiatives in developing local action plans and fathering coalitions. At a regional level, intersectoral training programs in skills development to support father involvement were initiated, and links were developed with other sources of expertise in fathering programs in other parts of the country.

The goal of the third phase of the FII-ON was to use "a collaborative approach involving interested Ontario Region CAPC-CPNP projects and other local or regional coalitions and associations, (to) create a network providing supportive conditions to healthy child development by stimulating supportive factors related to a father involvement at the local and regional level." Building on the momentum created through the initial community mobilization efforts, the FII-ON then began to systematically strengthen and develop intersectoral collaboration. In this phase, the community mobilization of the eight local initiatives in the original cluster was consolidated, and mobilization was begun with a second cluster of six others. With the aim of catalyzing a father involvement movement for the Ontario region, a networking process was also developed, creating the Ontario Region Father Involvement Initiative Network. To support local access to expertise, sensitization training and social marketing strategies and tools were developed and tested. Two-day intersectoral training sessions were held in the first cluster of communities, with additional sessions held for some communities with particularly keen interest. A sustainability plan, with actions to secure ongoing funding outside Health Canada, was also initiated in this phase, as was an initial community-based research and evaluation effort involving collaboration with the ProsPère project in Quebec and the Centre for Health Promotion at the University of Toronto.

The work now being undertaken in the fourth phase involves the systematic deployment of the mobilization initiative in the second cluster of communities, and expanded initiation of activities in new clusters with new partners. The specific objectives of the fourth phase are:

• to consolidate within an intersectoral approach a local community mobilization process for the first cluster of 11 communities

• to initiate within an intersectoral approach, a local community mobilization process for a second cluster of six to 10 communities

• to initiate within an intersectoral approach a local community mobilization process for a third cluster dealing specifically with the six Early Years pilot projects (provincial deployment of a Human Resources Development Canada initiative)

• to initiate the development of a community mobilization process for a fourth cluster dealing with Aboriginal communities

• to support the fledgling Ontario region fathering movement based on the networking of local community mobilization processes

• to support local access to expertise that would develop common strategies and tools related to father involvement, in consultation with the regional network and other centres of expertise

• to initiate a community-based evaluation process of the FII-ON mobilization model

• to participate in the establishment of research priorities and knowledge development related to the support of father involvement strategies.

Each phase of the Initiative has produced a report and work plan for the next phase. In addition, the participating communities are at various stages of developing their own action plans. The types of actions carried out vary from place to place, but could include training programs, discussion, support or play groups, policy advocacy and production of resource inventories and other support materials, among others.

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