At the request of Congressman Ted Weiss, the General Accounting Office (GAO) reviewed discretionary grant funding practices by the Office of Human Development Services (OHDS) for National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect projects. The GAO investigation focused on the extent to which OHDS selected and rejected full grant applications and preapplications out of ranking order without written justification and the extent to which it selected grant applications for administrative rather than competitive review without written justification during fiscal years 1984 and 1985. The results revealed that in selecting child abuse and neglect projects to fund in 1984 and 1985, 15% of OHDS's decisions on competitively reviewed full applications and preapplications were made out of ranking order. Written justification was not prepared for 83% of these cases, nor was it prepared for any applications rejected within ranking order or for 93% of decisions to select grant applicants for administrative rather than competitive review. Other required documentation on resolution of recommendations and suggestions of expert reviewers, review comments by OHDS officials, and files of rejected applications were also not kept. Although OHDS took steps to remedy these problems in fiscal year 1986, the steps did not resolve all of the problems. The report includes several recommendations for the Secretary of Health and Human Services. (NB)