The state Department of Children and Family Services is crediting an adoption education program with helping it reduce the number of children eligible for adoption to levels that are ``lower than we`ve had within memory,`` an agency spokesman said.
In Illinois, 280 children were eligible for adoption on Dec. 31, 1986, compared with 1,832 children in need of adoptive parents in February, 1980, according to DCFS spokesman Dave Schneidman.
He said 134 of the children eligible in December were white, 127 were black and the rest from other racial groups, including Hispanics. In February, 1980, 800 of the eligible children were white and 1,002 were black, and 30 were from other nationalities.
An education campaign that took DCFS officials into black and white communities helped the agency to dispel myths about adoption, he said.
When people found out they did not have to be married, wealthy or without personal faults to be eligible to adopt a child, they began adopting children and the numbers of eligible children began to decline from the all-time high in 1980, he said.
Schneidman also credited the ``One Church, One Child`` program, sponsored by Rev. George Clements of Holy Angels Catholic Church, with helping the DCFS and the children.
The program, which began in 1980, recruits adoptive parents for black children.