INDEPENDENT BODIES will be licensed to carry out assessments for adoption, allowing the Health Service Executive to divert social work resources away from adoption assessments and into child protection and family support work, the Minister of State for Children has said.
Barry Andrews told a conference of the International Adoption Association at the weekend that the Adoption Act provides for the establishment of accredited bodies to support the adoption process.
While the accredited bodies will have to build capacity to carry out assessments, he said he had informed the HSE that this was the way to go. The HSE would then divert requests for assessments to these bodies.
The Adoption Act, signed by the President in July, ratifies the Hague Convention of Inter-country Adoptions, provides for an Adoption Authority and for other changes to the adoption process.
It comes into force on November 1st.
It is expected that the chairman of the Adoption Authority will be Geoffrey Shannon, the current chairman of the Adoption Board.
Mr Andrews said he had been working over the past few months to put an authority in place that would have some continuity with the old board while marking a new start.
The Minister’s office will place advertisements in newspapers this week seeking expressions of interest in the establishment of adoption mediation agencies.
These will mediate between Irish prospective adoptive parents and the countries from which children are adopted.
The Adoption Authority will have to license these agencies and register them when approved.
Mr Shannon said the Adoption Board had already been working on new regulations for mediation agencies, which would be rigorous.
He said that after the Act comes into force at the end of the month prospective adoptive parents seeking to adopt abroad would be directed towards countries which had signed the Hague Convention.
Irish citizens would no longer be able to adopt from countries which had not signed the convention or with which Ireland did not have a bilateral agreement.
The two countries which are problematic in this regard are Russia and Ethiopia.
A considerable number of Russian children have been adopted into Ireland in recent years, but this will come to an end if there is no bilateral agreement.
Mr Andrews told The Irish Times he had talked to the Irish Ambassador in Moscow on Friday about progress on a bilateral agreement with Russia, raising hopes that a bilateral agreement with this country can be concluded. He said he was prepared to travel to Russia, if necessary.
Mr Andrews also told the conference that the Adoption Board had started a process of putting in place administrative arrangements with a number of countries that had ratified the convention.
These include the Philippines, the US, South Africa, Bulgaria and Thailand.
The board was also exploring adoption arrangements with Brazil and Kazakhstan.
He said the response received from Bulgaria was positive, but the South African authority had said they were not in a position to work with Ireland at the moment.
He warned that there was always a level of risk associated with inter-country adoptions, but stressed that all countries, whether receiving or sending countries, have an obligation to ensure that adoptions are as safe as possible.