The progress of the Birmingham Parent-Child Development Center (PCDC) in meeting the requirements of the first phase of the national PCDC project is described in this final report. Funded in 1970 by the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Birmingham project, like two other PCDC projects, was aimed at developing a parent education model which would help low-income mothers enhance the development of competence in their infants and 3-year-old children. The PCDCs were designed to be developed in two phases involving, first, model development, refinement, evaluation and documentation, and, second, testing the replicability and generalizability of the models. The Birmingham PCDC program developed a model based on a view of the family in poverty as a maintenance system consisting of component parts forming a unit which generally sustains internal equilibrium, tends to resist change, and is boundary maintaining. This final report of the first phase of the Birmingham PCDC project (1) summarizes the project background, (2) describes the theory and rationale on which the model is based (including guides to changing systems and interactional conceptualizations of child development, mother-child interactions and of the family in poverty), and (3) describes the Birmingham PCDC project activities in terms of four program needs: model-congruent goals, model-congruent practice, documentation materials, and process measures. Tables are included that indicate the sequence of the PCDC curriculum for mothers and for children. (Author/RH)