A partial evaluation of the comprehensive home care and home aid policy of the Ministry of Social Affairs (MAS) of Quebec was undertaken. Three different home care and/or home aid programs serving three urban catchment areas were compared for this purpose. Two of these programs offer comprehensive home care and home aid programs, while the third one offers nursing services at home only. One hundred clients from each program were interviewed at their admission and six months later. Three random samples of elderly from each of the catchment areas were also drawn to take into account local characteristics in the comparison of the clienteles. The study has shown that 1) the three clienteles do not differ except on a few variables. These differences are not systematically related to the type of program (comprehensive/nursing only). 2) That the clients who, on admission, have the profile closest to the client profile established by MAS, were among those that the interviewers could not find for the second interview. And, 3) a comparison of the clients of three programs (on living arrangements, functional impairments and chronic illness), with that of a random subsample of the elderly population, have shown that the former have a higher probability than the latter to wish to leave home. Thus the two comprehensive home care programs seem to experience difficulties in reaching the goals that the ministerial policy has set forth for them.