From Tusla’s Quarterly Service Performance and Activity Report for the first three months of 2019
A quarterly report from Tusla – for the first three months of 2019 – states there were 699 new inquiries made to the agency’s Adoption Information and Tracing Service during that period of time.
These are inquiries made by adopted people, birth parents, adoptive parents, siblings
of adopted people and other birth relatives and people raised in long-term foster care.
The 699 figure represents a 173 per cent increase when compared to the first quarter of 2018.
The same report states there was also a rise in tracing applications made with 291 new tracing applications received by Tusla in the first quarter of this year.
In regards to the length of time people who have made an application have to wait for personal information and/or the allocation of a social worker, it varies.
Those seeking personal information under GDPR legislation have had to wait anything from six weeks to six months, when Tusla’s own target is eight weeks.
Those waiting to be allocated a social worker, as part of a priority 1 application – where a birth parent is older than 70 – have had to wait anything up to 14 months, as opposed to Tusla’s target of three months or less.
Those waiting to be allocated a social worker, as part of a priority 2 application – where the applicant has a non-life limiting medical condition and/or were previously in state care – have had to wait anything from six weeks to six months, as opposed to Tusla’s target of six months or less.
Those waiting to be allocated a social worker for all other types of applications have had to wait anything between three months and more than three years, compared to Tusla’s target of 12 months or less.
The report can be read in full here
Tusla struggles to cope with adoption record demands (Conall Ó Fátharta, Irish Examiner)
Previously: Who Do You Think You Are?
Conflating And Confusing Privacy And Secrecy
I remember hearing that about one third of Tuslas social workers are on some kind of public service leave (there are endless varieties) at any one time, so none of this should be in any way surprising.