Designed to guide and structure the needs assessment of Pennsylvania children with special health care needs, this document describes six specific steps in planning and conducting a needs assessment. The steps include: (1) stating the goals of the needs assessment, including fulfilling legislative mandates, identifying geographical areas that have few medical resources, identifying perceived unmet needs of families, providing guidance for new service programs, providing a rationale for reallocating service monies, justifying politically expedient decisions, or helping to establish an agenda for action; (2) defining the population vs. defining the focus of the needs assessment; (3) deciding whose needs are being assessed; (4) defining sufficient representativeness of the needs assessment and including subgroups that represent points along a continuum based on biological severity, need for services, or social urgency; (5) synthesizing existing and/or collecting new information through reviewing existing reports and/or surveillance systems to determine what already exists, gathering expert testimony from parents or professionals, holding focus groups or panels, or implementing systematic surveys; and (6) developing and disseminating reports. For each step, key decision points are identified and recommendations are made based on previous experiences of other states and localities. (Contains 13 references.) (CR)