Chadwick Axes Adoption Agency
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday March 7, 1990
The State Adoption Agency is to be axed, setting off fears among adoption workers that State wards and disabled babies will now have even less chance of finding families to adopt them.
The decision, by the Minister for Family and Community Services, Mrs Chadwick, to close down the centre by July 1, is part of the on-going shake-up of the FACS department.
Most of the 30 agency staff will be kept to handle overseas adoptions. Others may be offered transfers within the department.
A spokesman for the minister described the agency yesterday as "a room full of people shuffling paper", and said that its function - to liaise with relinquishing and adopting parents and to rubber-stamp adoptions - would be better served by district officers in the department's seven regional offices
However, the chairwoman of the NSW Committee on Adoption, Ms Alison Croft, said that FACS staff were "already up to their ears in work".
"They're not going to have the time to pick up the expertise they need,"she said.
"The wards will simply miss out on being adopted. They'll be too far down on the list of priorities after officers deal with truancy and sexual assault."
Ms Croft, who also heads the Anglican Adoption Agency, said she was particularly concerned about the future placement of "special care" babies and children who were physically disabled or suffered from emotional disturbances
The Opposition spokeswoman on family and community affairs, Ms Deirdre Grusovin, also attacked the decision, saying that local FACS workers "simply do not have the time or expertise to handle adoption matters". She believes a regionalisation of the agency should have been phased in over several years so that staff could have been adequately trained.
The minister's spokesman, however, described the criticisms as a gross slur on the capacity of FACS staff because the district officers had been carrying out such work for years.
© 1990 Sydney Morning Herald