As a result of a new law passed in The Netherlands, in 2002, an increasing number of children with profound and multiple learning difficulties will attend school. The complexity of the target group requires appropriate assessment that is focused on programme planning. A new instrument, the "Checklist of child characteristics," has been developed for this purpose. This paper demonstrates how the scores on the checklist can be transformed into support profiles. It then discusses the results of a validity assessment conducted on support profiles that were compiled for 32 pupils. These results suggest that the instrument is valid. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables.)