Hi family and friends, Kim here.
Right after we were approved for a domestic infant adoption we started this blog to keep everyone up to date on our journey. In order to help you understand where we are now, I wanted to take some time to backtrack a bit and talk about the actual adoption process. Today I’m talking about the home study.
I was terrified of the Home Study process. I couldn’t find much information on what it actually entailed to start with, and everything I did read about it made it seem like it was the most overwhelming part of the adoption process.
According to adoption.org, the “home study is a document prepared by a licensed social worker in your state that examines every aspect of your family’s life. It includes finances, health, marital history, background checks, your feelings about adoption, why you are pursuing adoption, relationships with extended family, anticipation of parenting styles, and a description of your home and neighborhood.”
We were told it generally takes 3 months to complete the paperwork needed for the home study. We did it in 2 weeks, because Shane excels at lists – Seriously, I can take none of the credit for powering through the requirements, this was all down to Shane (thank you!).
Although I can’t promise this is the experience everyone in California will have (home study requirements seem to be unique to the state/county you live in), this is what our home study entailed:
- Getting fingerprinted
- Filling out paperwork until our hands cramped (more than once)
- Getting CPR certified (did you know that there are organizations that will come to you for this? What a great find!)
- Completing online classes about adoption and some of the unique challenges and opportunities you’ll come across as adoptive parents
- Having interviews with the agency
- This was split into 3 interviews with our agency, one together as a couple, and then one with Shane and the Social worker and one with Kim and the social worker.
- These interviews go pretty in-depth about your own childhood, any trauma you might have encountered growing up, current/past family relationships, how you think your childhood experiences may impact your own parenting, how you’re dealing with infertility if applicable, how your marriage is going, how you resolve conflict….
- All the interviews were several hours long, so this list goes on and on.
- Having a home inspection
- This is where the social worker makes sure your house is a fit place for a child, and that you know about basic safety, have a fire extinguisher and first aid kit around the house, and know about baby-proofing
- We ordered all the baby-proofing and safety stuff everything from Amazon with plenty of time to spare, but for the FIRST time ever our order was late. It actually arrived THE DAY OF the inspection, about 30 minutes before the social worker was scheduled to be there. Fortunately traffic was bad so she was a little late, and we weren’t required to have everything installed.
After we did our part for the home study, the social worker had to write the report and submit it for approval. This was the longest part of the process for us because we were right up against the holidays, and then our social worker got married, so the report was a little delayed. We did get to see it before it was submitted, which took a lot of worry off our shoulders getting to see what it said instead of just wondering about it.
Any expectant mothers thinking of making an adoption plan will not see the home study, which also takes some worries off my shoulders – those interviews went very deep, and while Shane and I are both an open book, it’s still a lot of info to be out there for anyone to see. What the expectant mother will see is our adoption profile, which was what I started working on right after our part of the home study was complete – we’ll discuss this in our next post.