Abstract: This thesis is an effort to describe an evaluation of Neighborhood Governance as it was being assembled in four metropolitan areas in the United States. As a response to the deterioration of these four neighborhoods, the Annie E. Casey Foundation established a program to enable residents of the beleaguered communities to increase their voice in the democratic process which is responsible for the distribution of resources, particularly those which relate to children's mental health services. It is the contention of this thesis that the Foundation's strategy is inappropriate for these conditions because they are based on an invalid theory of the behavior of poor people, the "culture of poverty." The data collected by the Evaluation Team through a variety of research methods supports this contention.