As the needs in the community changed during the sixties, the Trustees of Porter-Leath Home and the Board of Children’s Bureau began to look at other/better ways of serving children in need. For example, the Home’s Director Paul Sawrie expressed concern that Porter-Leath needed a casework service to supplement its small-group system of child-care. In October 1960, a cooperative organizational plan was proposed between the two agencies. By 1961, the Consolidation Project, a promotion of S.U.N., outlined a merger between Porter-Leath and the Children’s Bureau.
As a result, a Porter-Leath-Children’s Bureau Consolidation Committee was formed. Meetings and discussions in regard to consolidation lasted for almost a year, until Porter-Leath’s Board of Trustees finally withdrew from the idea. This action on the part of the Trustees was followed in the succeeding months by criticisms and pressures which finally resulted in Porter-Leath Home and Children’s Bureau being brought together under a trial period of actual work in the Home which continued for some nine months. This working arrangement, however, did not coordinate with Porter-Leath’s established routine and was discontinued in June of 1963. For the next few years, Porter-Leath Home did not become affiliated with the Children’s Bureau. Although the Home’s Director, its Boards of Trustees and managers realized the necessity to modernize its child-care efforts, they wanted to do so with minimal changes to Porter-Leath’s traditional customs.