Art therapists can perform many useful roles in outpatient therapy for individuals of all ages, and in the consultation services mandated by the Community Mental Health Centers Act. However, before an art therapist can serve in any capacity, it is necessary to get in, to find some means of entering existing service delivery systems. With the recent inclusion of Creative Arts Therapist job classifications in the Federal Civil Service, we may perhaps see the day when such positions will be as predictable and essential as the more traditional disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, and social work. Meanwhile, even when job classifications exist on paper, it will still be necessary for administrators to know how an art therapist can be useful, in order for them to decide to spend always-scarce funds in that area. I shall describe my own experience at the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Center (PCGC) where I have been since 1969, in the hope that it will alert both practitioners and administrators to possibilities and issues in professional and program development. From 1963 to 196.5, I worked for the Department of Child Development at the University of Pittsburgh as a Research Assistant. Part of my work was with hospitalized schizophrenic youngsters at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic (WPIC), seeing each one for weekly individual art sessions. During that year of involvement with the Children’s Residential Treatment Service, I met many child psychiatrists, both staff and trainees, who by 1969 were working at PCGC. I also had the oppo~unity to present one of my cases to Erik Erikson when he made his annual visit to the Departments of Psychiatry and Child Development, a presentation which took place in the auditorium at WPIC. After the birth of my third child in 1966, I again became involved in part-time work, teaching Art Education at a local college, and consulting in 196’7 to the development of a therapeutic art program at an institution for handicapped children. In 1968, a colleague at the college asked if I was interested in doing art therapy at the state hospital where he worked as a psychologist. His inquiry helped me to realize that I was ready to become involved in learning more about the area, which I had identified as a career goal during that earlier period of work with the psychotic youngsters. Through a speech therapist friend, I heard that there was something “going on” in drama therapy at the Child Guidance Center and then, through a child psychiatrist friend, 1 heard that one of his colleagues there was interested in art therapy. I called that psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin Shapiro, and went to see him. I was interested in finding a working situation where I could learn clinical skills, and he was interested in finding a person he could train who also had background in art and children. Unfo~unately, there was no money, the drama therapist then being paid out of a research grant. But he invited me to attend a weekly “expressive arts” meeting he had organized which included himself, a psychologist, a case worker, a group worker, and the drama therapist. A dance therapist was soon invited to join us, and with various guests along the way, we met every week for a most stimulating hour