This conference proceedings reports on a 1989 meeting addressing respite care for families of children with mental, emotional or behavioral disorders. The conference addressed: (1) respite care concepts, programs, and issues; and (2) planning for designing, financing, and implementing state and local respite programs. The report contains the conference agenda, transcriptions of speeches and panel presentations with a biographical sketch of each speaker, state delegation worksheets, specific state delegation work session plans, a list of workshop participants, and conference evaluation responses. Concerns addressed in workshops included how to finance respite care services, how to best train respite care providers, how to pull together diverse elements in a community to advocate for respite care services, and how to actually design and implement a program. State delegations generated action plans including efforts to coordinate various interest groups, to raise the awareness in local communities, to develop advisory boards, to collect data, to lobby state legislatures for funds and reasonable standards, and to identify needs of parents. (DB)