Aboriginal Father Involvement Programs National Scan.

This scan was requested by the Healthy Child Development Section of the Public Health Agency of Canada in response to anecdotal comments made at meetings and in communities which suggested that there is a growing grassroots effort across the country to create and implement strategies that support Aboriginal fathers? involvement with their children. The results of 2 months of intensive search did not suggest a landscape richly populated with Aboriginal father support programs. There are large gaps, and the distribution of programs appears to be uneven, with British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario having quite a bit of activity while other provinces and territories have fewer initiatives that could be found. The scan methodology involved contacting 130 individuals or organizations identified as having knowledge of or running programs for First Nations, Inuit or Métis fathers. Contact was established with over half of these individuals, yielding descriptions of approximately 35 successful programs, the results of which have been compiled into a program inventory associated with this report. This report documents the challenges, successes and practices of the first steps in what could become a growing grassroots Aboriginal father involvement movement. There is much to learn from the diversity of community-driven programs identified in this national scan.