Social service workers and artists from 16 cities attended a conference to share their experiences and hopes for child welfare. The conference opened with a theater performance telling the story of an inner city teenager who dreams of dancing professionally but becomes involved in selling crack; the audience helps to create the story's ending. Participants then worked together to discover bases for unity and to list the philosophical underpinnings of their mutual commitment to child welfare. In this process, participants found that a common language addressing creative work does not exist between social service providers and artists, and the search for clarity was sometimes frustrating. Participants discussed what partnerships between the arts and social services could accomplish with targeted youth including developing in young people the ability to self-evaluate and to express their emotions, helping service providers tap into their own creativity, helping troubled youth perceive their societal importance, sharing resources and training, forming a national network to foster communication among local programs, sponsoring local conferences, and presenting position papers. The group's consensus was that ways must be found to demonstrate the positive results that creative work can engender, so that partnerships between social service professionals and artists can flourish. (JDD)