The attitudes of some Eastern Health Board employees toward foreign adoptions became a source of concern last year but have since been addressed, the Minister of State for Children has said.
Mr Frank Fahey was responding yesterday to strong criticisms of health boards and social workers at the publication in Dublin of the Adoption Handbook by the Adoptive Parents' Association of Ireland.
The guest speaker, Dr Patricia Casey, a psychiatrist, accused social workers of being "politically correct" in their approach to adoption.
She did not confine her remarks to the Eastern Health Board, which is one of the State's eight health boards that together employ about 1,000 social workers.
She said those who hoped to adopt were "subjected to the most intimate and intrusive of assessments, not to mention their views on race, colour and refugees, as well as discussion of their sex lives and inspection of their bank accounts. Indeed, some of these assessments are conducted in a group setting thereby maximising the vulnerability of these people".
She was not complaining about the content of the questions but about the "extent and vehemence" of the assessment.
She claimed parents could be turned down "who are not enough in touch with race issues or who fail to meet some other nebulous criterion".
The strongest attack on the health boards came yesterday from Ms Helen Gilmartin, honorary secretary of the Adoptive Parents' Association.
Prospective adoptive parents sometimes had to wait years to get a home study completed by a health board, she said.
Some health board employees had a negative attitude to adoption and should not be employed in this sector.
"Whose needs are being served by these people? Not the child's, certainly," she said.
She also complained that a couple adopting for the second or third time "has to go through the exact same assessment as if they were adopting for the first time".
In his speech, Mr Fahey responded to the criticisms, saying that, when he came into office last year, what he learned of the personal views of some health board employees had been a source of concern.
"I have addressed this, especially in the Eastern Health Board, and there has been a change of attitude," he said.
The relevant EHB officials were away yesterday afternoon and could not be contacted for comment.
A spokeswoman said the EHB had put extra resources into foreign adoption, and the time an assessment took had been cut to nine months.
At yesterday's event the president of the Irish Association of Social Workers, Ms Imelda Keogh, said: "I would think adoption has worked for the majority of people who have been adopted."
There was no antagonism towards adoption among social workers, she said. The real problem was a shortage of resources.
The Eastern Health Board said yesterday evening that all its social workers dealing with foreign adoptions had volunteered to work in the area.