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Wolfensberger's documentation of various trends may appear to be excessive, but was retained because of historical circumstances: in challenging some widely accepted views, and in attempting the first major reinterpretation of the development of retardation institutions, it was felt necessary to provide solid substantiation. Otherwise, his interpretations might be dismissed as ill-founded, highly personalized hypotheses.

The first five chapters. Parts 1-4, essentially represent attempts to define and understand a problem, and to set the stage for thoughts about constructive action. In Part 5, various authors present service concepts which have either already been tried and found highly useful, or which, if untried, are relatively logical and feasible innovations.

In the first chapter of Part 5, Blatt presents some proposals on how to improve institutions if we must have them. These proposals, of course, stem from the observations he discussed in Chapter 3.

In the next chapter, Nirje, too, puts the observations he recorded earlier (in Chapter 4) into perspective. He presents the theoretical construct of "normalization" which underlies much of the Scandinavian legal and service structure in mental retardation. This construct has never been fully presented in the American mental retardation literature, but it is of such power and universality as to provide a potential basis for legal and service structures anywhere. Indeed, the editors of this book view the normalization principle as perhaps the single most important concept that has emerged in this compendium.

Blatt presented specific measures for institutional reform, and Nirje a broad theoretical framework for retardation services generally. At this point, Tizard and Dunn present chapters on practical, even administrative, aspects of service development and structure. Tizard treats the problem of determination of service needs, balance of service provisions, and the place of residential services within the service continuum. In a sense, he brings close to us the service concepts which were advocated in the 1962 Report by the President's Panel on Mental Retardation, but which so far have been implemented in only very few instances in this country, and even then only partially so.

It is quite likely that even without any further theoretical or empirical elaboration there would be a trend toward dispersement of residential centers. However, Dunn warns that while dispersement is highly desirable, it may not be enough. Both for programming and staffing reasons, he urges that residential facilities be not only small and dispersed, but that specific professional disciplines should operate different facilities according to their own service models, specializing upon the management of relatively homogeneous groups of residents.

A theme brought out again and again in this book is the need to include, view, and discuss residential facilities as only one component of a continuum of services. Nothing is as convincing of the viability of such a broad service system as visiting and seeing one in operation. Since this book cannot provide an actual visit, we decided to do the next best thing and present detailed descriptions of four model service systems. To serve as a model, the following requirements had to be met:

1. A model had to consist of a clearly circumscribed, currently functioning, entity, so that it could be unequivocally identified, described, and seen in operation by those desirous of visiting an operating exemplary system.

2. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of continuity of services, the model had to contain a range of services of which residential facilities were one part.

3. In order to be instructive in regard to administrative and planning aspects, the model had to be in a dynamic state of evolution according to a well-conceptionalized and formally defined (written) planning scheme.

4. Since services to the retarded are increasingly perceived as a right, and since services defined as legally rightful tend to be operated or at least regulated by governmental units, a model had to be operated or regulated under public auspices in order to be maximally instructive.

5. Long-term planning is not very feasible or meaningful unless the plan is for a well-defined geopolitical area. Because of this consideration, as well as the requirements of items 1 and 4 above, a model was required to be associated with a well-defined geopolitical unit.

6. Someone intimately familiar with a potential model service system had to be willing and capable of rendering a global, balanced, well-written description of it.

It was felt that these requirements would not only yield the most instructive examples, but that these characteristics would be those held by most service systems considered most exemplary by leaders in the field. It was with such leaders around the world that we consulted in order to identify service systems that would meet our criteria and be considered exemplary. To our surprise, very few systems were considered exemplary by these experts, and not all of these met the requirements. In the United States, despite extensive consultation, we would identify only one service system that came even close to satisfying the criteria. From other countries, three models emerged as suitable. Thus, a total of four model service programs were finally identified, described on paper, and presented in Part 6.