en. The early sixties, for instance, saw a sharp increase in the birth rate and the agency responded by pioneering in the use of direct hospital placement. In 1970, the CDA began to actively assume the care of children who had been placed and kept in foster homes for extensive lengths of time and who were unlikely to be returned to their natural parents or to relatives. They worked with the courts to free the children legally for adoptions into permanent homes. This new policy required reeducation of both the agency's own staff and the public. Publicity programs emphasize the plight of the hard-to-place child. Where 87 percent of all placements had earlier been of Anglos, now 87 percent are of hard-to-place children. In that group are included children five years of age or older, minority children, those with medical problems, the handicapped and the emotionally disturbed. Often larger sibling groups are also very difficult to place.
In attempting to find parents for these children, the CDA makes "aggressive use of a multi-media PR approach on a continual basis." The primary purpose of the public relations programs being used is to recruit adoptive applicants and natural parents. Such programs stress the needs of the hard-to-place child rather than the negative factors involved in his adoption. They emphasize that "the problem of the un-adopted child is a community problem which requires community action - and involvement." The CDA has been successful in finding homes for almost all minority children under five years of age as soon as they were legally free for adoption. Part of the success can be attributed to their emphasis of liberalized adoption requirements. One no longer had to have wealth in order to adopt. Importance is placed on an adequate and secure surrounding in the family.
Further aid to adoptive parents had been granted by the "Dymally Bill" of 1968, also called the "Aid to the Adoption of Chi...