The sub-committee was appointed in the Fall of 1987 by the Advisory Committee and Board of the Laidlaw Foundation. The idea came from the Board of Directors after a Foundation retreat. The sub-committee was given the mandate to explore the feasibility of a multi-year programme focus for the Laidlaw Foundation. They had two purposes - to clarify the concept of risk from a socio-environmental perspective as it relates to children and to develop a proposal for a review of the state of research and policy development in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
The committee members included Ralph Garber, Ph.D - then Dean of the Faculty of Social Work and the University of Toronto; R. G. N. Laidlaw, Ph.D - then president of the Laidlaw Foundation; Marvyn Novick, M.S.W. - sub-committee chairperson and Dean of the Faculty of Community Services at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute; and Dan R. Offord, M.D. - then Head of the division of Child Psychiatry at McMaster University and Research Director at the Chedoke Child and Family Centre. Staff members working on the project included project co-manager Nathan Gilbert, M.S.W. - Executive Administrator of the Laidlaw Foundation; Adel McKay - M.S.W. student at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto; project co-manager Karen Swift - Ph.D candidate at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto; and Mark Morisette - Ph.D candidate from the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.

The report "Towards the formulation of a New Programme Agenda for the Laidlaw Foundation for the 1990's" is a preliminary report.