Report aims to clear adoption group of impropriety

Publication date: 9 June 2010

By Conall O Fátharta

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Wednesday, June 09, 2010

ADOPTION agency Helping Hands, currently under investigation by the Adoption Board in relation to fees it charges people to adopt from Vietnam, has issued a report clearing the agency of any impropriety.

Helping Hands commissioned accountancy firm Grant Thornton to conduct a review of its accounts for 2007 and 2008 after the agency was specifically singled out for criticism in Unicef’s International Social Services report (ISS) last year.

The Adoption Board, which accredits adoption agencies here, also appointed a leading Dublin-based forensic accountant to investigate the agency’s accounts on foot of the concerns raised in the ISS report.

A statement from the Adoption Board confirmed it had met with this accountant who has raised a number of accounting issues with Helping Hands.

“They explained the significant progress to date on the client fees issue and set out the outstanding accounting issues raised with HHAMA to which responses are now awaited,” the statement read.

The ISS report was critical of the make-up of Helping Hand’s fee of $11,100, of which $9,000 consists of “humanitarian aid”. The report took issue with the way an increase of $1,000 in the agency’s adoption fee was reported to the Adoption Board as a required “fee” by Vietnamese authorities when, in fact, it was not a fee but part of the humanitarian aid component of the total cost charged by the agency.

The €15,000 Grant Thornton report found “no evidence of impropriety with regard to the day-to-day running costs associated with the provision of Helping Hands Adoption Mediation Agency’s professional facilitation service.

Chief executive of Helping Hands, Sharon O’Driscoll, who was a member of the Adoption Board when Helping Hands was selected as an agency, said the firm was hired to assist the Adoption Board with its investigation. She said Grant Thornton will also carry out additional work for the agency.

“We appointed Grant Thornton, one of the world’s best-known firms, to conduct a thorough and independent forensic investigation into our procedures and accounts to prove that there was no evidence of any impropriety in our organisation. As you can see from the report, no evidence has been found.”

“In November 2009, the Irish Adoption Board appointed a firm of accountants, Browne Murphy & Hughes, to make enquiries into our organisation. We have asked Grant Thornton to assist them with their inquiry, which reviews the same period of time as the Grant Thornton report,” she said.

Helping Hands employs a Cork-based firm to audit its accounts every year.

Since it was founded in 2005, the agency has received approximately €1.9 million in funding from the HSE and Lottery funding issued through the Department of Health.

Countries: Ireland

Persons: Sharon O'Driscoll