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This paper describes a pilot program in Pennsylvania to develop a link between the community and the State in program planning for children diagnosed as brain-damaged, retarded or emotionally disturbed. Through the vehicle of a comprehensive diagnosis by a multidisciplinary team, the Eastern Pennsylvania Diagnostic and Evaluation Center program was able to shed light on a number of related problems in the fields of child health, education, welfare and child psychiatry.

This paper represents an initial at tempt to spell out some of the areas which will be given major emphasis by the Behavioral Science Program of the Growth and Development Program, Na tional Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).2 Al though the Institute feels that these areas are among the most important ones relating to its current program in terests, these suggestions are to be re garded as permissive and not control ling. The Institute will be constantly alert to, and willing to support a num ber of, high-risk projects in which the probabilities of payoff are not great, but in which payoff, if it does occur, would make an exciting, important, and mean ingful contribution to the understanding of human growth and development. A full understanding of human growth and development demands the coopera tion of investigators in a wide variety of fields. The Growth and Development Behavioral Sciences Program will be receptive to grant applications relevant to its concerns from persons in a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, child develop ment, political science, and many others. Proposals will be supported if they meet