51. Social awareness of the importance of family planning in Hong Kong has been spreading steadily as a result of the patient efforts of the Family Planning Association since it opened its first clinic in 1951. It is now operating sixty-one clinics, many of them in Medical and Health Department clinic premises, including thirty-two Intra-Uterine Device Clinics which specialize in the IUD method of contraception, and much useful guidance was given to over sixty-eight thousand indi- viduals during the past year. Slightly more traditional modern male methods of contraception have undoubtedly spread through all classes of the population. The 1966 By-Census showed that the birth rate had dropped from 34.3 per 1,000 to 24.9 per 1,000 between 1961 and 1966 and the Association can take at least part of the credit.
52. The Child Welfare Section of the department has continued to maintain close liaison with voluntary agencies many of which, as already mentioned, receive an annual government subvention. Certain agencies provide accommodation for varying periods for children found by the department to be in need of care and protection; the largest number, two hundred and four children, entered the Po Leung Kuk, an old-established institution (see Appendix 12); the Kuk also now provides very welcome extra accommodation for disabled children and has established two day nurseries. Other homes also admitted a number of children referred by the department. Particulars of all known volun- tary institutions providing residential and day care are in Appendix 13. Of the two thousand eight hundred and five babies and children in residential care, only one hundred and fourteen were available and considered suitable for adoption at the year's end; some are unlikely to be adopted on account of mental or physical disability or for other reasons although attempts are still being made in most cases to effect the adoption even of these hard-to-place children, while the rest will have parents or one parent or relatives and will return home when the need for care ceases, so that there is little question of their being adopted.
53. Good progress has been made since the Chuk Yuen Children's Reception Centre opened. Children who are found abandoned or lost are made wards of the Director of Social Welfare by order of court, if their parents cannot be traced. Last year a total of two hundred and twelve children were admitted, of whom one hundred and twenty-three have already been returned to their parents or relatives; nine left for oversea adoption, thirteen were adopted by families in Hong Kong;
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