The assessment process in the field of adoption has received scant attention in the literature. This may be a comment on the lack of confidence felt by professionals working in this field, but it all reflects a lack of accountability both to their colleagues and their clients, the prospective adoptive parents and the children being placed for adoption. One of the few studies in this field “Adoptive Screening, new data, new dilemmas” (Brown and Brieland)1 points to the need for a much closer examination of the assessment process, highlighting in particular the way in which social workers may be influenced by their own values as well as by agency criteria. The study goes on to point out that in general “agency practices in this sample reflect substantial caution about placements”. The Child Welfare League of America Standards for Adoption Service: Revised, states that “It is every child's right to have protection. The kind of care that meets his needs and which he would ordinarily be expected to receive from his parents. The family, the community agencies, and the states have responsibilities related to the assurance of this right”. If we take this statement as reflecting the values and assumptions underlying practice in adoption service, obviously the assessment process has a key role to play in protecting the right of children.

This paper tries to demonstrate how the existing practice in adoption social work, when applied to applicants and prospective parents, is inadequate, unjust and diametrically opposed to the acknowledged professional ethics and values. As dissatisfaction alone is unproductive, an alternative is proposed to the existing practice based on a Social Change Model of generic social work.

Before I came to Kenora I was under the impression that the Children's Aid Society was the equivalent of our Social Welfare Department, however I was wrong — it is a voluntary organisation.

Children's Aid helps families who have been experiencing problems. They look for ways to prevent problems arising which would disadvantage children. Their programs are directed towards supporting and strengthening the family unit.

A service offering artificial insemination with Donor semen (A.I.D.) commenced in June 1976 at the Royal Women's Hospital. This service was established mainly because adoption is no longer readily available to anyone with problems of infertility, the number of adoptable children having been dramaticaly reduced over the last 3 years. Twenty-five percent of infertile couples are so due to the husband's infertility. With the advent of programmes such as at the Royal Women's Hospital, these couples are able to consider an alternative means to having a family, especially if they can extend their view of parenthood beyond the biological aspect, to the rearing of children.

In the research report Welfare of Migrants (1975), it was noted that all the ethnic groups surveyed were deeply concerned about the problem of “culture conflict”, which was seen as a generation gap in which cultural differences were significant in producing conflict. For the social worker the anxiety, tension and intra-psychic confusion, which this paper attempts to describe, indicates that it offers an important and challenging area for social work concern and involvement.