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The number of children living in institutions is staggering. Existing knowledge of individual and group dynamics in insti tutional treatment is not being applied. Children must not be pushed from one foster home to another before being placed in an institution. Institutional placement must cease to be con sidered "a last resort"; it must be recognized as an appropriate treatment situation for certain children. Institutions must em phasize the living situation as much as clinical services and must provide for treatment and healthy growth development.

The study investigates the relationship of 153 students' housing arrangements to the frequency of dropping out from college. Results indicate that dropping out was related to the living situation, the highest rates occurring for Ss living in rooms, in boarding houses, and at home, the lowest for those in sororities, men's dormitories, and co-ops.

For proper treatment of diabetic patients, it is necessary for us to let the patients understand the importance of diet therapy. For this, we have to graspe the living situation of each patient correctly and guide him in the best way we can taking his individual situation into our consideration. One of the easy approaches is a food exchange program. Cooking courses also offer good opportunities for the patients to memorize approximate weights of various diabetic foods. Mental guidance is also important to prevent the patients from injesting unsuited food because of mental stress derived from strict food restriction

A FEW YEARS AGO when we began developing programs for the severely retarded residents of our 3347-bed institution, we based our planning on the belief that each resident should be considered as an individual. Such an approach was necessary at tile beginning, and it proved useful because it focused so emphatically on the needs of individual residents. However, as time passed we became more and more aware of the great commonalities of the residents’ needs. We also realized that no matter how successful we were at training individual residents in certain skills, we were not effectively modifying the behavior of the group as a whole. In addition, we knew that individual gains could be maintained only if they were reinforced by the total living situation. We concluded that the residents’ needs could best be met in an environmental program that supported their abilities, however limited, and compensated somewhat for their handicaps. Thus we decided to shift our major efforts away from individual training and concentrate instead on improving the environment. In October 1969 we introduced our compensatory environment program on two residential units that separately housed the men and women who were the most severely retarded and most behaviorally disturbed in our institution. The program, whicil has succeeded beyond our greatest expectations, has shown that when humane and comfortable living conditions are made available for such people, more often than not their bizarre, disturbed behaviors automatically disappear. They begin to acquire new skills almost on their own initiative or with only minimal formal training. A full-time director is in charge of the program; he is aided by two assistants and a program development and training coordinator. The program has focused on two particular areas that have been

Many of the problems we have discussed at this conference have related to experiments done in vitro. Often they have concerned small pieces of the joint, such as the synovial fluid or areas of cartilage. It is important to consider the joint as a whole and to have information in the living situation, if the data we accumulate is to be interpreted physiologically and pathologically. In the Bio-engineering Group for the Study of Joints at the University of Leeds we have been concerned to look at the stiffness of joints in normal subjects and patients with various forms of arthritis.