These materials have been prepared to help communities identify child care needs and appropriate services or policies for meeting those needs. The materials can be used by community groups to answer two questions: (1) Is there a need for child care in a specific community? (2) What kinds of child care services or policies would be most useful for that community? After a definition of child care needs assessment and a presentation of reasons for assessing such needs, content focuses on 10 steps to be included in a child care needs assessment: (1) establishing a planning committee; (2) defining the purposes of the needs assessment; (3) specifying the objectives; (4) assessing resources; (5) identifying the information which will be needed; (6) choosing research methods; (7) estimating costs; (8) collecting data; (9) analyzing and interpreting data; and (10) reporting results. (RH)