Questions About Beginning Your Adoption
Where do we start?
You start by doing lots of research. You should read books, magazines, and newspaper articles about adoption. If you have access to the Internet, there are many resources to be found there. Search out and talk to other families in the adoption process. Attend workshops, seminars, and adoption support group meetings put on by public and private adoption agencies. Americans Adopting Orphans has monthly information and support group meetings, an online discussion group, and offers a variety of classes and seminars. Please call for more information.
Most of the paperwork requirements are pretty simple. Many documents must be collected from a variety of sources including your physician, references from your friends and colleagues, identifying documents from the county or state of your birth, etc. You can do this for yourself or have us do it for you. The biggest document requirement is for a home study pre-placement report, discussed in detail below.
You can choose to receive a complete and current list of all documents required for an adoption from us. We include the number of copies of each that are needed, and sample letters for requesting all of these documents. We can also include a description of how to have documents you need properly notarized and legalized. You can also choose to have us collect all of your forms for you, and directly assist you in finding and working with a home study provider. You decide which services to request and which fees you pay.
So what is a home study?
A home study is the evaluation of your family by a social worker. Most countries require that the social worker who performs the study be employed by a licensed, not-for-profit adoption agency. You fill out an autobiographical questionnaire about your life, feelings, and relationships. This introspection helps you clarify your reasons for wanting to add to your family and helps you assess your abilities to raise children from another culture.
Completing a home study is also an educational process. Your home study provider will help you think about the impact adopting a child will have on you and your family, and will provide or recommend educational materials and resources to help prepare you for the changes to come. Under new federal guidelines most families will need to take 10 hours of dedicated adoption classes. These are available online for a small fee. This is also the time you should develop a profile of the child you wish to adopt (more about this below).
In most states, two or more meetings with a social worker are required, with at least one visit in your home. Additionally, supporting documents are submitted with the questionnaires that include information about your financial status, age, health, proof of 10 hours of adoption education, etc. After reviewing all of the documents, as well as the information and impressions gathered during the interviews, your social worker will write a report, sometimes referred to as the "Pre-Placement Report". It talks about you and your home, your dedication to having a family, your readiness to parent and parent different kinds of children, etc. In this report the social worker will state whether or not, in their opinion, you are prepared and able to parent a child. The pre-placement report process often takes two or three months to complete.
When we had the home studies for our family, our social workers talked to us about the impact a child (or an additional child) could have on our relationship, some parenting issues, and adoption issues we would face in later years. Thinking through all of these things was an important part of preparing for our adoptions and growing family.
Where should we go to get a home study?
Our clients can choose the amount of help we give them in finding a home study provider. If you live in Washington, Alaska, or Missouri, we can perform the Home Study for your family. If you live outside of our area, or just prefer a different home study provider, you can choose to receive a list of requirements and suggestions for specific things that should be included in a home study conducted for your country of choice. We will do what we can to help that agency complete your report correctly and in a timely manner. We can help you locate appropriate, qualified sources of home studies, or give you the tools to find a source yourself.
During our second adoption, we called several Seattle-area adoption agencies to find one that would just do a home study for us. Ask people you know for recommendations. Even the Yellow Pages in the phone book can give you plenty from which to choose. After talking to several, we found a home study provider that we liked a lot. The whole home study process took less than three months, including the time we took to fill out the autobiographical questionnaires.
What do we do next?
While filling out your home study questionnaires you can also be gathering and preparing the rest of your documents. Once you have all of the documents together, including the home study, they are assembled into a "dossier". Your dossier is your formal application and request to adopt a child, along with all of the supporting documentation you have collected. Your dossier is prepared for submission to your child's country. It receives approvals, stamps and seals from different levels of government. Your dossier is then ready to send, formally requesting the referral of a child.
You can choose step-by-step instructions and consultation for preparing your dossier. We can even prepare your dossier for you.