Why Is Community Capacity Building Important

Capacity building has become a vital objective in a wide range of public policies and programs in Australia. Most analysts and practitioners in the human services use the concept of community capacity despite the fact that it is seldom exactly defined in these policies and programs. Just as mentioned in the previous paragraph, capacity building can be developed within individuals, communities, groups, teams, organisations, inter-organisational coalitions, or communities. A clear example of this can be seen in the child welfare practice and policy. The ideas of community capacity building has already found their way into child welfare and child protection practice and policy in Australia. The National Framework, endorsed by the Council of Australian

Another is The Communities for Children initiative. This is a large-scale investment from the federal government to ensure that children have the best possible start in life. It reflects a bottom-up, fit-for-purpose approach to child and family services that aims to provide opportunities for the community to address locally identified needs (Lewis & Taylor, 2005). The initiative adopts targeted early intervention approaches targeted at delivering positive outcomes for young children and their families in disadvantaged communities around Australia. Under the initiative, non-government organisations are funded as "Facilitating Partners" to develop and implement, in consultation with local stakeholders, a strategic and sustainable whole-of-community approach to early childhood development. The premise is that the coordination of services and community engagement are crucial for the effective provision of services (Stronger Families Stronger Communities National Evaluation Consortium,

The community capacity evaluation question for health promoters, program planners and and health agencies becomes is focused on how this program, through every stage of its planning, implementation and evaluation, build the capacity of target groups and members. Nine key tools have been developed by Hawe et al., (2000) to assist in evaluating and monitoring capacity building in health promotion. They comprise; assessing the strength of a coalition, this is how well an interorganisational coalition is functioning or to set tasks in relation to coalition planning. Assessing opportunities to promote incidental learning among other health worker. This is used for situations where the aim is to promote invisible skills transfer. Assessing opportunities to promote informal learning among other health workers, this is to encourage other to be more engaged in the job. It is a health promotion skills development. Assessing if a program is likely to be sustained. This is used at the end of a program to assess the establishment of a program, organisational and community level factors which is known to be associated with program uptake and maintenance. Assessing the learning environment of a team or project, this assesses