The second part of this book, which examines contemporary responses to Irish children and families, at first concentrated on dominant approaches to ‘race’ and ethnicity within social work in Britain. It then analysed some of the findings from a survey of directors of social services departments (SSDs) that looked at their organisation's involvement with Irish children and families in England and Wales. The data generated might be viewed, therefore, as providing a ‘view from the top’. Now, however, the discussion will switch focus and examine the ‘view from below’ and look at what Irish social work practitioners regard as the key issues. The ‘voices’ featured derive from in-depth interviews conducted in early 2003. More specifically, eight Irish social workers involved in children and families social work were interviewed.

As observed in Chapter Five, almost a quarter of the returned questionnaires in the survey of directors of SSDs came from London. Indeed, more Irishborn people live in London than in any other city except Dublin and Belfast (Hickman, 2002, p 22), and in what follows all of the respondents live and work in the capital. Moreover, in this chapter, ‘social worker’ is used in a broad and inclusive manner. Three of the practitioners had attained a social work qualification – either a Certificate of Qualification in Social Work or the Diploma in Social Work. The other interviewees had different, though related, job titles. Previous research has revealed the relatively high proportion of Irish-born people who work in ‘health and social care in Britain’. O’Connor and Goodwin (2002), for example, show that 17.9% of the Irish-born workforce are located in this sector as against 11.2% of those born in the UK. The vast majority of these are Irish women. Perhaps related to this, as Lloyd (1999, p 103) observes, it is “with the Philippines that Ireland is paired as the world's greatest exporters of female nursing and domestic service workers”.

A short, semi-structured questionnaire formed the basis of the interviews and this had four components. First, it asked the interviewees to provide a selfdescription. Second, it looked for a description of the team, or project, in which the interviewee was located. Third, the questionnaire inquired about their perspectives, as Irish social workers, on working inside or alongside SSDs. Finally, the questionnaire focused on the future and improving services for Irish children and families.