Social workers must wonder what they have done to deserve the condemnation heaped on them recently. The way in which they question parents who wish to adopt children from another country has been decried by the Adoptive Parents' Association of Ireland and by other commentators. Some even claim that social workers in foreign adoption are somehow to blame for the fact that there are Irish children in care in this State and for the fact that thousands of Irish women have abortions.
In all this, it seems to have been forgotten that social workers have been charged with ensuring, insofar as they can, that people seeking to adopt or foster children are fit to do so. If social workers were to be told that they must not ask any questions which might appear, to those questioned, to be intrusive, hurtful or objectionable, it is difficult to see what point there would be to involving them in the first place.
Many - not all - of the parents who apply to adopt, or foster, have been through the agony of infertility treatment and of trying to have a child for many years. By the time they begin an adoption or a fostering process, they have already suffered a great deal of emotional hurt. To them, the assessment process (virtually the same for adoption and fostering) is another agony because it puts off, still further, the day when they will adopt or foster a child, and there is always the fear that they will not be accepted at the end of the process - though Eastern Health Board figures show that more than 90 per cent of those who complete the assessment are passed.
But, painful as it is, the process must be undergone. Not too long ago, when there were no social workers around to ask "intrusive" questions, many children were placed with people who misused them and they are now coming forward to tell their stories. The assessments carried out at present greatly reduce the dangers of such mistreatment recurring. All assessment processes will include elements with which some reasonable people will agree and other reasonable people will disagree but attacking social workers per se is not a way to argue about the validity of certain questions.
That said, there is a strong case to be made for dialogue between social workers and bodies such as the Adoptive Parents' Association of Ireland. If the association is unhappy with aspects of the assessment process then, at the very least, the process needs to be examined more closely. Individual social workers operate a process which is laid down for them. If this requires change, it is a task for policymakers in consultation with all the interested parties. It must not be done behind the closed doors of health boards by managers whom the average social worker, or parent, is unlikely ever to meet. The Adoptive Parents' Association of Ireland should be included in the process and so should the Irish Association of Social Workers. Indeed these two bodies could do a great deal of good by starting their own dialogue.