It is imperative that effective preparation and training strategies for future early childhood personnel, teachers, social workers, and health practitioners be established so that low-income, high-risk, multiproblem families can be adequately served. Effective programs and services for such families are family-centered, neighborhood-based, multidisciplinary, empowering, preventive, comprehensive, wholistic, sequential, integrative, and culturally relevant. Such programs and services are nonconventional and nontraditional, and instruction about them is not offered in institutions of higher learning. As part of the effort to bring about the provision of appropriate education of personnel in training, family support programs that offer comprehensive neighborhood-based, family-centered services can serve as laboratory schools and learning centers for training and retraining practitioners. An example of the laboratory school approach is the Avance Family Support Program, which has trained individuals to use effective strategies for serving low-income, high-risk Hispanic families. (RH)