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Paul Michael Garrett   is the author of Remaking Social Work with Children and Families (Routledge, 2003) and Social Work and Irish People in Britain (Policy Press, 2004). He is the adviser on social services to the all-party Irish in Britain group in the UK parliament. He lectures at the department of political science and sociology at the National University of Ireland in Galway.  

Changes introduced by New Labour and the publication of the Children Bill are ushering in a "remaking of social work with children and families in Britain".¹ These changes make it a good time to re-examine social work and social care's approach to Irish children and families.

Social work's drive towards more inclusive practice often fails to incorporate Irish people. This is largely because the dominant approach to questions of race and ethnicity often perceives black and ethnic minorities as interchangeable. New research has begun to examine how social work has engaged with Irish people in Britain, both historically and to the present day.²

The largest Irish-born community in the world outside Ireland is in Britain, according to the Irish government.³ The 2001 UK census revealed that 1.2 per cent of the population of England and Wales identified themselves as white Irish.

The Irish community in the UK is complex and diverse. But social work has largely failed to recognise that there may be any Irish dimension to theory and practice. Moreover, this oversight is a particular problem, given the vulnerability of some Irish people in Britain.

It would, of course, be inaccurate and misleading to portray Irish people in Britain as being entirely beset by discrimination and multiple hardships. But it is important to recognise those in the Irish community who are vulnerable. These include: children who have been adopted or fostered; migrants, including children, disabled people, lesbians and gay men; older people, including those who worked in the unregulated sectors of the British economy; travellers; drug users and people with mental health problems; and homeless people or those in poor housing.

Irish people in Britain continue to have their lives impaired across a range of indices, yet this is seldom taken into account in most mainstream approaches to race and ethnicity.

Also, the resilience of anti-Irish racism in Britain is rarely acknowledged. In particular, anti-Irish traveller racism, combining anti-Irish racism with a more pervasive antipathy toward the unsettled, strangers and migrant populations, continues to blight the lives of many children and their families.

It has been argued that "British child welfare practice has suffered from a lack of historical reflection".⁴  If we accept this, there is a need for social work and social care educators to examine the history of their work with Irish children and families. For example, since the 1960s, the idea of repatriation has been associated with racist projects to create a white Britain. But in the 1960s repatriation was applied to pregnant, unmarried Irish women who had travelled to England to have children placed for adoption. Indeed, thousands of migrant unmarried mothers were repatriated to Ireland from the 1920s until the 1970s.⁵

There is also a need to scrutinise how social work is responding to Irish children and families. My research asked social services directors to comment on their organisations' attitudes to Irish children and families. But there is also a need to listen to the views of Irish providers and users of services. In this context, my research provides insights into six themes:

• The approach to race and ethnicity in social work education.
• The complexity of Irish identities in Britain.
• Racism and stereotyping.
• Social services departments' failure to "recognise" Irish children.
• Children and families who are Irish travellers.
• An agenda for the future.
  
  The wholesale changes to social work with children and families mean there are four main areas that warrant particular attention.
  
  First, given the "evidence-based practice" agenda, there needs to be more research undertaken with Irish children and families who are engaging with social work and children's services in Britain.
  
  Second, social services departments and other social care providers need to improve their monitoring of Irish people and enhance service provision. This should also occur in other departments, such as housing and education and the proposed children's trusts.
  
  Third, and importantly, there should be improvements in the area of education and training for social work and social care. Within social work education, the General Social Care Council should ensure that providers of social work courses embrace, at the level of theory and practice, recognition of Irish people in Britain. Irish social work staff are likely to be an invaluable resource and social services departments need to recognise this and draw on their experience and skills.
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  Finally, there is a need for the government and professional organisations to take a leading role and give more prominence to Irish ethnicity in policy documents that tend, at present, to render Irish children and families "invisible" in literature concerned with race and ethnicity. Within influential bodies, such as the Association of Directors of Social Services, there should also be a willingness to foster and promote best practice and to highlight those social services departments currently working hard to provide better services for the Irish community.
  
  VOICES FROM RESEARCH
• "We do not really differentiate between white Irish and white British. Our priorities for developing ethnically sensitive services lie elsewhere. We probably have a much bigger population of Irish extraction that is hidden in white British." Social services director.
  
• "We found the Irish dimension was neglected in the social work literature on anti-discriminatory trainingÉ Me and other Irish social work students on the course would be expected to place ourselves in the white group, yet we said we came from a particular racialised group. There were some lecturers on the course who would find this idea difficult to take." Irish social worker.
•  "I attended a case conference where the father of the children was Irish and one of the grandparents happened to be Turkish. The chair of the conference went on at length about whether the children had access to their Turkish heritage, but ignored any Irish aspectÉ There is an intolerance about raising the Irish issue and you'll find there is often no recognition in the file or elsewhere, that a family is IrishÉ Irish children are not identified in the system. It may be professionals who are putting them down as English, but parents might put them down as English also. This happened with the 2001 census. There is a feeling that if they put themselves down as Irish they may well get discriminated against so they'll say they were born here." Irish social worker.

ABSTRACT:

The dominant approach to race and ethnicity within social work and social care in the UK has often failed to acknowledge the needs of Irish people. This article argues that it is time to challenge this omission and to examine how social care professionals are engaging with Irish children and their families.

REFERENCES:

 ¹  PMGarrett, Remaking Social Work with Children and Families: A Critical Discussion on the Modernisation of Social Care, Routledge, 2003  ² PMGarrett, Social Work and Irish People in Britain: Historical and Contemporary Responses to Irish Children and Families, Policy Press, 2004  ³ Task Force on Policy Regarding Emigrants, Ireland and the Irish Abroad, Government of Ireland, Department of Foreign Affairs, 2002, www.gov.ie/iveagh  ⁴ O Stevenson, "It was more difficult than we thought: a reflection on 50 years of child welfare practice", Child and Family Social Work, 3: 53-161, 1998  ⁵ PMGarrett, as above, Social Work and Irish People in Britain

FURTHER INFORMATION:

• MJHickman and B Walter, Discrimination and the Irish Community in Britain, Commission for Racial Equality, 1997 
• BGray, Women and the Irish Diaspora, Sage, 2004  l BWalter, Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place and Irish Women, Routledge - Two books examining the lives of Irish women, in Britain and elsewhere, 2001  
•  Action Group for Irish Youth  www.irish.org.uk/index.shtml  
• Traveller Reform Coalition  www.travellerslaw.org.uk/

CONTACT THE AUTHOR:

Paul Garrett can be contacted at PM.Garrett@nuigalway.ie