This study defines child advocacy and considers what it can and should become. The contents of the study are divided into the following chapters: Background of Child Advocacy; National Picture; Proposed Focus for Child Advocacy; Advocacy in Action; Program Variables and Search for Results; Overview and Recommendations. The project, supported by a grant from the Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, indicates that many activities and projects which are labeled child advocacy are in no sense new or different from what has occurred in the children's field for a long time. The study defines the unique activity called child advocacy as intervention on behalf of children with those services and institutions that serve children or impinge on their lives. It is action that focuses on transactions between individuals and institutions or among institutions as they determine the immediate circumstances of children and families. These services and institutions begin where the family leaves off. Whereas child welfare's primary concern is interventionwith secondary institutions such as schools, juvenile courts, health programs and child welfare programs. Child advocacy is thus a shorthand term for advocacy on behalf of families and children. (WSK)