This thesis is a case study of the changing state--nonprofit relationship in the home support sector in Ontario; it identifies changes to the provincial states administrative configuration, regulatory, and funding policies in both the home support and the home care sectors between 1958 and 2001 and gauges the impact and significance of these policies for the autonomy and viability of home support nonprofit service providers. The study is situated within a policy context defined by competing social care and health care logics and by shifts to the logic governing state-nonprofit relationships in the province.Since 1990 the state has become more involved, powerful, and autonomous on the one hand and more idiosyncratic in terms of its level of support for individual services and organizations on the other. Prior to 1990, the state was autonomous but not coordinated and it faced a fragmented and uncoordinated network of interests. Consolidation of state responsibility in a single Ministry has enabled the state to act unilaterally and concertedly to implement changes to regulatory and funding policies and to act in a role as a contractor for services.The impact of administrative, regulatory and funding policy changes on nonprofits organizational viability is twofold. Overall there has been consolidation in the home support sector across Ontario and in Waterloo Region - Wellington-Dufferin Region (WWD). The organizations that have survived share a higher degree of formalisation and a greater concentration on health care as opposed to a purely social care focus. There is a strong case that nonprofits which operate in this sector are less autonomous than in the past and are less able to pursue independent organisational goals.Our findings show that in the home support sector a grassroots ceiling has been created, beyond which small grassroots organizations are not able to pass. The organizations that have remained viable and eligible for state funding have undergone changes to become more formalized and less grassroots in response to the structural constraints of a health care system logic, centralized decision making, stringent regulatory, budgeting and accountability requirements and uneven levels of funding for services and for organizations.