What if We Don’t Get on with Our Social Worker? Can We Change?

Yes you can. If you sense that you are not going to hit it off, if you feel the social worker is not doing her job properly, or has prematurely made up her mind against you or has some prejudice against you because of your ethnicity, religion, lifestyle, sexuality or social class, you should be able to change her, just as you can change your family doctor under the same circumstances. Contact the agency supervisor higher up and, as neutrally as possible, ask for a different social worker. Do not rant and rave; this will get you a label as a trouble-maker. If you feel the agency as a whole is turning out to be wrong for you, or you have fallen out with two or more social workers from the same agency, you should change agencies well before the crunch of going to panel.

There are incompetent and bigoted social workers, although not many. There are also incompetent adoption agencies, although not many. Most of the problems you are likely to come across are due to under-resourcing: too few social workers trying to look after too many cases with too little money to spend on keeping systems working efficiently. The following section lists some warning signals.

Signs of an Incompetent Agency or Social Worker

Most local authority and voluntary adoption agencies are well run, efficient and genuinely trying to do their best. Just as most social workers mean well, work very hard and do a good job. But not all. Some agencies are inefficient, badly run, treat the children in their care like cattle, their staff like serfs and prospective adopters like mental cases or intruders.

There are indicators that an agency or social worker is not up to the job. Whether you stick with an agency that you think is under-performing is up to you: your level of tolerance, how crucial the shortcomings have been in your own case, how many times they have failed you. Some of these indicators point to carelessness, some to ignorance of procedure or law, some to bad organisation by individual social workers or managers, some to under-resourcing of the service, some to deviousness and bad faith. In some cases you may not be able to tell whether the problem lies with your social worker or elsewhere in the system.

• Not returning phone calls or answering letters in a reasonable time,
• Phones continually engaged or always on voice-mail/answerphone,
• Staff refusing to identify themselves over the telephone,
• Being evasive about when a social worker will return a phone call or call on you,
• Letters and publicity containing elementary spelling and grammatical errors,
• An Internet Web site which is poorly designed, is always “under construction”, has a high proportion of dead links, is out of date, etc.,
• Making errors of fact (such as birthdates) in letters to you or on forms,
• Misinterpreting statements you make to them, especially when you put them in writing,
• Losing files or documents,
• Not returning originals of documents promptly,
• Refusing to let you see files and reports about yourself (except when justified),
• Inability to produce documents within a couple of days when you ask for them,
• Giving you the brush-off or run-around when you ask for information or progress reports,
• Changing social workers on you often, or without an obvious valid reason (such as maternity leave),
• Social workers who are often off sick,
• Other indications that staff turnover is high,
• Social workers or other staff who persistently mispronounce your names, after being corrected,
• Social workers who show a lack of sympathetic understanding of infertility problems, miscarriage, etc.,
• Rigidly held, doctrinaire views about things like previous divorce, homosexuality, single adopters, birth parents, tracing the birth family, contact with the birth family, birth control or abortion, regardless of whether these are relevant to your own application or whether you agree with them,
• Racism or other bigotry,
• Publicity material which fails to feature a range different ethnic groups or is poorly produced,
• Amateurish videos or photographs (out of focus, over- or under-exposed, poor sound quality, badly edited) for the children on their books, or which appear to have been staged by the social workers to conceal rather than reveal the child’s personality or needs,
• People often late for appointments, without contacting you to say so (but social workers often do get held up unexpectedly by emergencies or interviews that run overtime),
• Social workers who always seem rushed, harassed or under stress, or unable to devote enough time to interviews,
• Social workers who complain about their bosses, co-workers or other agencies,
• Meetings where crucial people are often missing, especially if it means decisions have to be postponed (but do remember that scheduling case conferences is a nightmare),
• Meetings where people are not ready to present the reports they were assigned to do or are otherwise unprepared,
• Apparent lack of communication between people and agencies (receptionist-social worker, agency-police, social worker-foster family, between social workers, between agencies),
• Delay in starting to take up your references or doing social services and Criminal Records Bureau checks (but these checks are notorious for taking a long time, for reasons beyond the adoption agency’s control),
• Discouraging you from joining Adoption UK or other organisations, or from subscribing to Be My Parent,
• The agency not being a corporate member of both the British Association for Adoption and Fostering and Adoption UK,
• Poorly organised adoption preparation classes, when speakers don’t show up, equipment doesn’t work, they can’t find the key to the room, poor quality handouts and other course material, etc.,
• Attempts to “control” you too much in interviews, meetings, preparation classes, etc.,
• Not telling you about things you should know about, such as eligibility for allowances, other avenues you could take if they can’t place a child with you in a few months, the need for documents, what the next few stages in the proceedings are,
• Unwillingness, without giving you a good reason, to let you approach another agency or clearing house,
• Giving you misleading information, such as misrepresenting the probable outcome of a panel meeting, the availability of a particular child for adoption, or a child’s legal status,
• Evasiveness or ambiguity about whether or not they will pay for extra legal expenses if the adoption is contested by the birth family or some other legal complication arises,
• Lack of clear guidance about things like adoption allowances, respite care, boarding school fees, settling-in grants, post-adoption counselling, etc., which you might need for your child,
• Refusal to give assurances in writing about paying legal costs, providing respite care, boarding school fees, etc., if oral promises have been made,
• Evasiveness about comprehensive background information on children being offered to you, especially after going to panel for matching,

We had an agency that buried our file for several months because of a complication they didn’t know how to deal with; it just kept getting put back at the bottom of the in-tray. Eventually we sorted it out and a few months later we had out first child placed with us. In every other respect the agency was very good. And 11 years later, when we needed help, our original caseworker was still there.

Our first adoption agency told us we were being considered for a child, with several other couples, and then didn’t bother to tell us when the panel was meeting or the results, until several months later, and then only when we asked.

Obviously something like writing 1927 for 1972 for your birthdate on a form is pretty minor. Count yourself lucky if you don’t make a couple of mistakes like that every day yourself. But being evasive when you ask serious questions about a child who is being offered to you can mean that they haven’t investigated things that should have been investigated, or that they are deliberately hiding something from you, such as a history of sexual abuse or extreme behaviour. Things this serious really do happen sometimes. Sometimes you may not even be able to put your finger on anything special, but you just know something is wrong.

Somewhere between these two extremes is your own cut-off point, the straw that breaks the camel’s back, when you tell the agency to get lost. It will depend on how badly you want to adopt, the intrinsic seriousness of the mistake and whether it can be put right, what kind of apology or restitution is forthcoming, how far down the line you have gone with them already, and how badly you want the child in question.

If you try a different agency, do your best to document the first agency’s failings properly so that they can’t put the blame on you; otherwise you may have a hard time getting assessed by another agency.

© Roger Ridley Fenton