Sir, - Prof Patricia Casey of UCD (Opinion, November 9th) calls on the Department of Health and the media, among others, to rethink their views on adoption in Ireland. In the course of her rallying call, she loses no occasion to slam an easy target: the profession and teaching of social work. She refers to a "1980s . . . crop of social workers." She writes of "influential works . . . Marxist in ideology" which have influenced the profession and appeals for "a review of attitudes and practices among social workers in the field." Her approach is as simplistic as that of blaming mental illness on the attitudes of psychiatrists - a point of view she seems unlikely to support.
In fact there have been several scholarly and contemporary social science research studies which provide insight into adoption, family formation, lone motherhood and related fields carried out by V. Darling, V. Richardson, N. Flanagan, to mention just a few. Indeed, an entire volume of the review Administration in 1996 was devoted to "Protecting Irish children"; this will provide her with background reading references to the problems of children in care. Reading these, she might find that one of the problems facing Irish social work is the medical model of service delivery imposed on the profession in the 1970s. It is continued in the structure of social work employment through health boards, rather than social service departments. It is precisely under the orbit of the health boards that social work is being driven to the kind of investigative approach with children and families which she berates, rather than a needs and care perspective.
Prof Casey suggests that birth mothers may be "emotionally abused by being told half-truths about modern adoption". This is not supported by research. One study revealed that one in three of (over 40) unmarried Dublin mothers did not wish to be assessed by a social worker nor to have further involvement after assessment. The study found that social workers' time was concentrated on child mothers under the age of 18 years and this was the age group which in fact had a higher propensity to favour adoption.
A short walk across the corridors of UCD would bring Prof Casey to the department of social policy and social work. There she would find that students are not "trained" as she revealingly and disparagingly refers to the nonmedical professions, but are provided, like her own medical students, with elements of critical thinking in the form of higher and post-graduate education. Students are encouraged to understand the work of other professions alongside which they will later work. They are discouraged from adopting positions which are unsubstantiated by research.-Yours, etc., Dr Pauline Conroy,
Guest Lecturer in Social Policy,
UCD,
Dublin 4.