I am raising this matter on behalf of constituents who want to adopt a child from abroad. They received information and an application form from the South-Western Area Health Board and were advised that the waiting time for processing the application would be between 16 and 18 months. This is the initial stage of the adoption process. The next stage that leads up to and includes adopting a child will take another 18 months. Like many others, the couple accepted this timetable without question.
There is now a problem, however, with the waiting time for the processing of the initial application form. This is related to the Eastern Regional Health Authority and, in the case of my constituents, specifically to the South-Western Area Health Board.
I looked at the website of the International Adoption Association of Ireland and was shocked by the information based on the most recent data available to the association. According to Department of Health and Children figures for December 2001, the national waiting list for overseas adoptions stood at 1,070 applications. Of these, 51% live in the ERHA area, while of the 38 full-time and one part-time social worker doing adoption assessments State-wide, fewer than one quarter are in the ERHA area. This discrepancy means that each ERHA social worker deals with 57 applications while social workers in health boards outside the Eastern Regional Health Authority deal with only 18.
This discrimination against ERHA applicants makes the service terrible in Dublin when compared to other areas. Based on current productivity levels, the ERHA health authority applicants on the waiting list can expect a four year wait before starting assessment and, at best, they will then have to wait a further year before receiving their declaration of suitability.
Furthermore, social workers seem to do far too few assessments. In 2001, they each carried out 15 complete assessments, considerably below the national target of 18 to 20 and a reduction from the 20 to 24 target set in June 1999 by the Department of Health and Children's standardised framework on inter-country adoption. According to the Department's own figures, between December 1998 and September 2001, the ERHA inter-country assessment service team grew from eight full-time and one part-time social workers to nine full-time and one part-time social workers, an increase of one social worker in the health board area with over 50% of national applications. In the same period, the number of non-ERHA social workers doing inter-country adoption assessments rose from nine full-time to 28 and one part-time, an increase of 19 full-time and one part-time social workers in health board areas with less than half of the applications. Since 2000 the number of ERHA social workers allocated to inter-country adoption assessments has fallen from 12 full-time in June 2000 to nine full-time and one part-time in June 2001 and remains at that level as of December 2001.
There are also continuing doubts about the accuracy of the ERHA figures. Since September 2001 the ERHA alone of all health boards has refused to provide an official estimate of the waiting times. The South-Western Area Health Board states that it cannot accurately project waiting times due to the constantly varying numbers on the waiting lists and the fluctuations in the number of social workers available for assessments.
The Minister of State recently addressed a conference on inter-country adoption organised for the International Adoption Association. He said that the issue of changing circumstances in the 21st century and their impact on adoption legislation was being actively considered and that he hoped to be in a position to produce a set of proposals in the near future and consult widely on them. I welcome such proposals but the system must be in place to deal with overseas adoptions, particularly in the largest population area.
Are the statistics I read out accurate? Has there been any meaningful improvement? Does the Minister of State have statistics to back that up? There is a mismatch between the demand for the service and the allocation of social workers that has led to a massive waiting time problem in the Eastern Regional Health Authority area.
Will the Minister give a commitment, given the discrepancy that penalises people living in Dublin, to redistribute the processing workload of the South-Western Area Health Board to other health boards? I ask for this one small commitment on behalf of the hundreds of families in the Dublin area who want to give nothing but love and a chance of a better life to children from overseas.
