ADOPTION: Homestudy in 8 weeks

Adoption process advice time!

No matter which route you take to completing your adoptive family, you must complete a homestudy. You want to foster? You need a homestudy for that too. If you are adopting domestically, this will be the most time consuming task in your adoption. If you are adopting internationally, specifically from a Huage Convention country, your Dossier will be your biggest set of documents.

So what exactly is a homestudy anyways? In short, a homestudy is a complete evaluation of your family; your home, personal life, work, finances, etc. It is one big report that is used to determine adoption suitability in the United States. Homestudies are written up by your social worker after all home visits, interviews and paperwork are complete. It could be anywhere from 15 pages to 30 or more. This is essentially the first step in any adoption. Your adoption agency should supply you with all necessary forms, instructions, timelines, etc. We are using Nightlight Christian Adoptions. They are highly organized which is a huge plus! Which brings me to my first piece of advice:

1. BE ORGANIZED FROM THE BEGINNING!!!

I can’t even stress this enough! There will be TONS of paperwork!!! It can get overwhelming pretty quickly. Get yourself a binder, page protectors, labels, etc. anything that will keep you organized. I have one binder for our homestudy documents and another for our Dossier- which I actually don’t have anymore because it is in Colombia getting translated! Make a copy of EVERYTHING you send off. You will need a copy of all of your documents just in case.

2. For International Adoptions: Do your homestudy documents at the SAME TIME as you do your Dossier documents.

Why? Because a lot of it is actually just duplicates of documents already in your homestudy. Example: We needed medical clearances for both the US and Colombia so we did them at the same time. Most of the Dossier documents will need to be notarized and apostilled, so a few extra steps for the Dossier. It is worth it to do it at the same time. You will need many sets of fingerprints, do them at the same time too! Trust me! Plus, when it comes time to work on your dossier, most of it will be complete! Work smarter, not harder;)

3. DO NOT TAKE YOUR TIME!!! Ugh, can’t stress this one enough. This is the part of your adoption timeline that you have nearly complete control over. I can’t even tell you how many families take forever on this. 6 months is way too long to complete a homestudy. A year? Ridiculous. Sorry, but if your adoption isn’t your biggest priority, then perhaps adoption isn’t for you. Adoption requires you to fight for a child. Parenting in general requires this too. Don’t be lazy in a process where you are trying to prove that you care, that you will be a good enough parent. One where you will need to be this child’s biggest advocate. Taking your time does not show your commitment, if anything, the exact opposite. Our social worker actually told us that! Your timeline is a little test people. Don’t fail the very first one! And if you have been “matched” pre homestudy, for instance, a waiting child, then you owe it to that child to move as quickly as you possibly can. He or she is waiting on you! If you are “too busy” now, then you will be too busy to be a parent as well. This is the easy part. The tough begins the day you bring your child home. The moment you receive your paperwork, you should be on the race to finish it! Don’t take 3 months to complete it all. Take a week off of work, dedicate your entire weekends, stay up until 2am to get it finished. Do whatever it takes to get it done! No excuses. I have 3 kids, 3 businesses and homeschool. If I can do it, so can you. I took a week off of work, our weekends were consumed with trips to the notary and I definitely had some up til 2am nights. Divide and conquer with your partner. Split up what you can to minimize feeling overwhelmed. You will need to complete training as well, don’t take weeks on this. I actually don’t understand why some find this so difficult. We did everything twice since we began our adoption with another agency. We redid EVERYTHING after we made the switch to Nightlight. We really kicked ass on our homestudy timeline:) I scheduled our interviews and home visits for as soon as our social worker could fit us in. She was impressed with our quickness and drive to bring our daughter home as soon as possible. We got everything in within 5 weeks but it took a few more weeks to receive the final, signed homestudy document. You do not have control over that.

4. Prepare for your home visit! Once all paperwork and interviews have been completed, its time for that dreaded home inspection! But honestly, it was a piece of cake. We are pretty tidy and neat already so it wasn’t that big of a deal. My husband and I are safety freaks already so we were childproofed to begin with. Have a pool? Get a cover for it. Declutter your home. They don’t want to see all your junk everywhere. Spend time organizing. There will be specific requirements and a checklist that should be given to you by your agency. Just follow what they ask of you and this should be an easy box to check off. Our home visit was around 4-5 hours but my husband’s personal interview was also done at our home inspection.

5. Be yourself!

Here is the the simple fact. Humans are terrible liars. If you think you can pass yourself off as some super parent that is perfect, then you will raise some red flags. Remember when you were a dumb teenager and thought you could get away with X,Y,Z and now can’t believe you ever thought you were so sly? Yeah, kinda like that. These people are trained in judging people. Humans and parents are not perfect. These agencies know that. They just want to see if you really are who you say you are. Don’t be guarded. So be honest, tell them your flaws….tell them about the pain in your life that has shaped the person you are today. Tell them your fears and shortcomings. They are just people, this IS personal, not professional….so be personal! Wear what you would normally wear. Be who you are with your family and close friends. We were super blessed with the most amazing social worker that almost felt like a longtime friend from the moment we met. We got lost in conversation over coffee at our first meeting. It helped that we are the exact same age so we did bond on some growing up in the 90’s nostalgia:) It is such a relief to have her on our side. I’m so glad she will remain on this journey with us for the next two years! I assume we will continue to keep in touch even after that! I text her all the time… yup, that’s how casual it is!

In our final homestudy judgement, I was described as very confident, genuine, honest and “slightly bossy” LOL!!! They like seeing you being a human! I was 100% myself, even said tons I probably shouldn’t have to our SW but she appreciated my honesty. There was a lot of “maybe I don’t write that down in your homestudy” Haha! So be yourself. Tell them the funny as well as your sad life stories. You can’t bullsh*t a homestudy, so don’t even try.

6. Remember to breathe through the paperwork. One step at a time. One papercut at a time! You will get there, and once you do, it will be the biggest relief!

If your adoption is domestic, you are nearly there after your homestudy! High five to you! If international is your journey, the next step is your Dossier. Get on it mama! And if your agency is smart like ours is, they will complete your Dossier while you are waiting on your i800a immigration approval. This is the step we are currently on! So any prayers that the approval letter from USCIS arrives soon are much appreciated! Once it arrives, we should be receiving our girl’s referral! Big steps here!!!

My next blog post will be about how to speed up your USCIS immigration approval…. it just may or may not require you to bug your local congressman. Yes, I am really that driven! When there is a will, there is always a way!