Statement by the President Announcing the Establishment of a Special Task Force on Handicapped Children and Child Development.

HEALTH SURVEYS indicate that many children in our Nation have serious physical handicaps. Over 400,000 children have epilepsy, over 500,000 have a hearing loss, nearly 3 million have speech defects, and 10 million have eye conditions requiring specialist care.

Other children will join the ranks of the 1 million school dropouts each year or become juvenile delinquents. Many other children have special health, education, and welfare needs.

There are more than 50 different programs in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare which relate to the needs and problems of handicapped youth.

In order to better develop more comprehensive health and education programs for children, I have directed the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare to establish a special task force on handicapped children and child development. This group will review all existing programs and recommend to the Secretary, for my consideration, legislation for the next Congress.

There has been very little attempt to detect and correct problems that might cause children to fail in later life. If the resources of the school and the community can be brought to bear on these problems before they become damaging, the child and the Nation will be greatly benefited. We must expand our national resources to help the handicapped and to prevent "failures" among our children.