But what struck me about your recitation of alternatives is your observation that, in effect, if we fail to supply the resources to educate handicapped children, we may be condemning them to euthanasia by nutrition.

I would ask you one question-the same question which I put to Dr. Dinger-with respect to your feeling about possible alternatives to finding funds for supporting education of handicapped children. One alternative is the bill under consideration, the Education of the Handicapped Children Act extending the present statute.

Another one is the proposal that I suggested, I hope accurately, of our very able colleague, Mr. Quie, that would include handicapped children services under title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Yet another alternative is revenue sharing for education.

I believe you endorse the first alternative but I would like your judgment on the other two.

Mr. Ross. We haven't studied Mr. Quie's proposal enough to form an opinion. We do have strong reservations on the revenue-sharing approach. It has been our experience as an agency and one of the reasons we came into existence was the fact that in broad service programs the handicapped are neglected for a number of years but it has been our experience that in broad programs the handicapped are neglected.

We would have strong reservations on a block grant approach to the States where handicapped are not earmarked for servicing and funding.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Why is that?

Mr. Ross. As I said, in the past, United Cerebral Palsy Association came into existence because there were broad social programs and they weren't very big in those days, but the handicapped were the last ones down the road to be considered.

If there was money left over after other people were served, then handicapped were brought in.

Mrs. HAYNES. In dealing with children who have as one component some element of cerebral disfunction which can affect a variety of handicaps I believe simple data that 90 percent of the babies originally served did indeed show multiple handicaps and yet so many could transfer out does not mean they are thereby damned from future progress but indeed it does make them have a difficult time getting into the mainstream of programing which is set up for single categories.

If you have learning problems but you also can't walk, you can't get in and vice versa.

I believe it is this falling between the cracks that needs a great deal more attention before the States will indeed be ready to provide the multiple services.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Hansen?

Mr. HANSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate both of you for your very thoughtful and helpful testimony.

Let me ask Mrs. Haynes first of all how these children come to your attention? By what means are the children identified to receive services

Mrs. HAYNES. This is, I think, one of the values of having had this privilege to take such five centers but we are studying how they do come. In some places we are finding that increased sophistication on the part of the public health nurses that are dealing with high risk population is enabling them to detect the babies that seemed to have developed aberations and foster that referral to appropriate resources. In other places such as university based center in Iowa dealing with rural babies, here it is right next door to where many high risk mothers are being delivered and so the communications are being fostered.

I believe that the collaboration is our marine center, in California, these little ones can go to school when they are three which does not obtain in other parts of the State.

And the close relationship of the staff when the babies do get into the public school special classes.

I believe, I can't prove, I believe they have alerted the public school staff to what can be done. So when there are round ups of the preschool children known in the community, I think there is a greater awareness. I cannot document this now but I shall attempt to do so in the course of this study.

So there are many physicians now that they are beginning to see their role in this dovetailed education. It used to be so segregated before. The medical was happening here and education there.

Now, they see that there are adjunctive collaborative parameters of programing that can be applied to the children, they are more ready to refer babies that come to their attention.

Mr. HANSEN. But in order to come to their attention the child must have demonstrated some symptom of a handicap.

Mrs. HAYNES. Perhaps the physician may be alerted because of the risk factors during pregnancy or at birth.

Others might be tolerant of observation of developmental delays or some aberration in the way the baby develops.

A broad program of education to alert the medical and scientific community to the possible implications of this I believe is going on simultaneously which fosters them this abilitative prospective approach, not the treatment of a single disease entity as such.

Mr. HANSEN. I might note that one of the distinguished witnesses before this subcommittee 2 or 3 years ago, a pediatrician, made the observation that with respect to most children in the Nation from the time they leave the hospital a few days following birth until they enter school, there are no medical records.

This is the time when they are most vulnerable but it seems rather shocking that under our system we have not developed the means to identify potential problems that the youngsters have to maintain some kind of medical records that could be useful for the future.

Mr. BRADEMAS. If my colleague will yield, he may recall when we were in Israel a couple of years ago we visited a hospital and children's ward in Tel Aviv. At the hospital, medical records from birth were on computers, and, therefore, the medical history of that child could be followed throughout his life with improvement in his health care, as I recall.

Mr. HANSEN. Yes. We have a long way to go obviously. But it sounds

alerting the physicians to the necessity of trying to reach and identify youngsters who may have problems for which we can provide some help.

I would make a final comment and commend you for the approach that seems most constructive to me in trying to develop within the family and the home the ability to help the child.

This seems to me to be one of the areas of misunderstanding of our efforts in trying to reach and respond to needs of young children. Somehow it is interpreted as being inimical to the interests of a strong unified family.

I think in some respects the criticism has been justified that we have not taken advantage of the families and the homes as much as we should to develop there the kind of a climate and the kind of understanding that the children need.

No matter what you do in a clinic or a laboratory, the child will interact with the family and in the home for much longer period and in a much more profound way than anything else that you can add.

So therefore, our efforts to help families to understand how children grow and develop and what their needs are can only produce enormously positive results.

So I am encouraged to head the progress you are making in that

area.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Mr. Sarasin ?

Mr. SARASIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mrs. Haynes, do you find in your early warning system, for lack of a better description, that you actually see and can document, but the ability of the child, for example, to get along much better and perhaps work out of the programs and get into the regular school system because you can catch them early?

Mrs. HAYNES. I am sorry, I didn't quite understand the question. Mr. SARASIN. I didn't understand it either.

What I am trying to ask, I think, is your emphases on trying to get the child very early and not until after the parents have gone through a long period of time not knowing or bringing to anyone's attention the fact that the child may have a motor disability among other disability, do you find by catching them early you are able through therapy to work with them quickly and work them out of that situation or isn't that likely to happen?

Mrs. HAYNES. To give you very hard data, we would have to have two control groups. What we are offering is an advisory council made up of experts that include three past presidents of the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and distinguished educators, one of whom you will hear later today, that have combined their clinical judgments underlying each one of these interventions based on their knowledge of what has been happening to these children as they grow older.

Part of the document is to try to document the scientific basis on every intervention. It is going to be a long, hard road. It is certainly our impression, having worked with older children about whom we have been consistently told, if I had only had him sooner to prevent

sooner to reinforce the language, we are hoping to foster the potential from the earliest possible. We hope we can prove it to you as one of these other first chance network projects.

Mr. SARASIN. Thank you.

I wish I had been able to ask the question as well as you have been able to answer it.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Thank you both very much indeed. Your testimony has been most instructive. We are grateful to you for having come. Mr. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BRADEMAS. Our next witness is Marcia Burgdorf. We are pleased to see Miss Burgdorf, both because of the institution she represents and because she is my constituent.

Won't you go right ahead please. You are representing the National Center for Law and the Handicapped, South Bend, Ind.

STATEMENT OF MARCIA BURGDORF, PROJECT ATTORNEY, NATIONAL CENTER FOR LAW AND THE HANDICAPPED, SOUTH BEND, IND.

Miss BURGDORF. Good morning. I am glad to be here. I am the project attorney for the National Center for Law and the Handicapped. First I extend my apologies on behalf of our director, Dr. Joseph Cunes, who was not able to be with us this morning.

The National Center for Law and the Handicapped is a federally funded project through HEW. We get our funds through Bureau of the Handicapped and Disability Services Administration.

We are located in South Bend, Ind.

The basic purpose of the center is to fight for the rights of all handicapped persons in the country. The whole idea of the legal rights of the handicapped is a very new idea. Ten years ago if you said to the parents of a handicapped child that their child had legal rights, many of them would have laughed.

When they took their children to school to register the principal would often say, I am sorry, Mrs. Jones, we don't have a program for your child, and the parents would take their child home quietly probably never to attempt to register the child again.

Nowadays, although the first situation does still happen, what we are beginning to see is that parents are asking the question, why aren't you providing programs for our children? And the Federal courts have said in the landmark Mills case last summer that all children have a right to a publicly supported education despite the degree of handicap and that this education must be appropriate to the child's needs. That case is presently in different forms being filed in 20 other States and the courts seem very favorable to the concept that all children do in fact have the constitutional right to an equal educational opportunity.

Some of the things that the center is doing is trying to implement on a State-by-State basis the decisions of the Federal court.

No. 1, we are doing this through educational program. We are speaking at conferences and we put out a newsletter so that we can provide information from the grassroots level on up through professional groups to let people know that handicapped have legal rights

and we send our newsletters to attorneys general, State legislatures, law schools, anyone who would be interested in the information of what is happening in the area of legal rights.

Second, we could teach legislation on a State level. We could teach rules and regulation, any legislation that is going to affect the handicapped and try and eliminate the sections of the bills that are going to discriminate against the handicapped and going to exclude children from educational programs.

Finally, when we find situations where there is a problem, for example, children are being excluded from the educational system, and this problem cannot be solved through the administrative process, then we are authorized to litigate or provide legal assistance and we do this through several ways but basically we provide assistance to local counsel and provide briefs and we critique their complaints and perhaps even enter cases to provide assistance to the court.

I think it is important for us to note that one of our experiences has been as we traveled around the country that there are many, many children who are being totally excluded from school programs.

I visited many institutions myself and found thousands of children that are warehoused in institutions without any educational programs. Many of the institutions are praised out in the countryside where people are not sensitive to their needs and they can go along through life without any kind of program at all.

One particular institution where I was visiting this week, it was an institution simply for the retarded child. Fifty percent of the children in that institution, which was approximately 1,200 people, were mildly retarded. Probably had no business being in the institution.

But they are the kind of child that could easily be taken into the normal educational program. For a long period of time we have been providing education for these children-the mildly retarded-so we are talking about a whole gamut of handicapped children.

There are also many handicapped children in the community with no educational programs or totally inadequate programs. What is destined to happen to these children is that they are going to remain second-class citizens. They are never going to be able to develop to the fullest of their capabilities, and they are going to continue to be a burden on their families and society unless we provide them with their needed education.

I think maybe I could give you a highlight by giving you individual examples of cases we have run across in recent weeks.

Not too long ago we were approached by the parents of Jimmy. Jimmy is a 5-year-old boy who has severe speech and hearing problems. In his school district they do provide kindergarten for all children. The school was aware of Jimmy's problems before he registered in the kindergarten, and they said they would be happy to take him. Jimmy was placed in a small 18-child classroom and in the regular public school program.

After about 3 weeks, Jimmy's mother got a call saying, I am sorry, we can't deal with Jimmy. Take Jimmy home and bring him back when he is 8 or 10, and maybe we will have something for him then.

That is a rather arbitrary figure, to bring him back at 8 or 10 when