For more than 35 years the Federal/State Rehabilitation Program has struggled with the issue of how to meet the rehabilitation needs of deaf individuals identified as "at risk," or as "low functioning deaf persons (LFD)." This paper reviews the training needs of these clients who are "LFD" and then describes successful models for training and rehabilitation of this population group. The implementation of a proposed model for a national comprehensive service, training, and research program to provide leadership to the country's efforts to rehabilitate this "LFD" population subgroup is then described.