How to Adopt a Child in a Thousand Crazy Steps--Part Three (Conclusion)
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0.000 HBDHow to Adopt a Child in a Thousand Crazy Steps--Part Three (Conclusion)
<html> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/adoption-sign-a.jpg</p> <p>After all the preliminaries and the parenting class comes the infamous Home Study. <strong>Dun-dun-DUN!</strong></p> <p>If you haven't read <a href="https://steemit.com/psychology/@stephmckenzie/how-to-adopt-a-child-in-a-thousand-agonizing-steps-part-one">Parts One</a> and <a href="https://steemit.com/psychology/@stephmckenzie/how-to-adopt-a-child-in-a-thousand-crazy-steps-part-two">Two</a>, please take a moment to do so now, to understand how much we went through <em><strong>just</strong></em> to <em><strong>get</strong></em> to the home study.</p> <p>Ready for more adoption adventure fun? Here we go!</p> <h1>Step Nine--Do the Home Study (it's Not as Easy as it Sounds)</h1> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/home-study-1.jpg</p> <p>After the parenting class was over, and we successfully graduated it without missing a single class (which, frankly, amazed me), and after we answered the social workers' supervisor's follow-up questions to her satisfaction, the next step was the home study.</p> <p>It didn't happen immediately. When the parenting class ended, the instructors were still waiting on everyone's fingerprint results to come back in. When they did come in, they started the home studies on the class participants based on whose fingerprints came back first.</p> <p>We did our fingerprints the second week they were offered. Even so, it was still a two-month wait of pretty much nothing but silence from the fine folks at the Department of Children and Families until we were contacted via email with the news that they were ready to do the home study on us.</p> <p>The main social worker from the class (i.e., the one who talked the most) would be our personal social worker from then on, doing the home study and guiding us through the process of matching with a child. She scheduled a time to come out to our house a couple of weeks later to begin the process.</p> <p>The home study, it turns out, is done in three parts.</p> <p>There is also a metric ton of paperwork you have to get together for it, and have it all done and ready to submit to your social worker by the end of the third part.</p> <p>So, with a list of more homework to do, we awaited our social worker's arrival.</p> <h2>The Home Study--Part 1</h2> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/home-study-0.jpg</p> <p>The first part of the home study is an interview with you and your spouse together, at your home, as well as an inspection of your home. The home is checked for child safety and general safety features, and to make sure there is a bed for the child. </p> <p>Unlike with foster care, where you have to have a bedroom for the child, you are only required to have a bed for the child when you're adopting. The bed can be in the living room, as long as the child has a bed of his or her own. It's an odd kind of distinction, and the only way in which I think the foster care requirements are more stringent than the adoption ones (usually, it's much easier to qualify as foster parents than adoptive parents, except with the bed/bedroom thing).</p> <p>They also want to make sure your house is relatively clean, and check out your neighborhood.</p> <p>The interview portion just goes over a lot of what was talked about in the parenting class. You and your spouse are asked about the type of child you want to adopt, what behaviors or issues would be "deal breakers" for you, what your marriage is like, and what type of support you have in the community from family and friends who live nearby.</p> <p>The social worker is basically double-checking to make sure you're both on the same page regarding what you want and expect from adoption.</p> <h2>The Home Study--Part 2</h2> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/home-study-2.jpg</p> <p>A couple of weeks after the first interview, the social worker returns. This time, she is there to interview one spouse alone. We decided I would go first. My husband just hung out in his music studio during the whole thing. I don't remember him even coming out to say hello to her.</p> <p>The individual interviews are much more intensive and detailed than the joint one. Do you remember the extensive autobiographies we had to fill out for the last week of the parenting class, from Part Two of this series? Well, the second interview is just like that, only verbal. </p> <p>It's essentially the same questions about every aspect of your background and current lifestyle, only asked by the social worker, instead of you writing it down.</p> <p>Our social worker and I became much more relaxed with each other during this interview, as we could talk together like women do, and exchanged some stories. She told me almost as much about her life as I told her about mine. </p> <p>I actually liked her a lot better when she left than I had up to this point. She'd seemed kind of snobby before, but after I talked to her for two hours one-on-one, she came across as a genuinely likeable person for the first time.</p> <p>It just goes to show, first impressions aren't everything. Sometimes, you really do have to take the time to get to know someone before their real "self" comes across to you. I hope the same phenomenon happened to her regarding me.</p> <h2>The Home Study--Part 3</h2> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/home-study-3.gif</p> <p>Two weeks after interviewing me, our social worker came back again to interview my husband alone, without me. I just chilled in my bedroom while they talked in the living room. Though the wall to my bedroom was on the other side of one of the living room walls, I didn't hear too much of what they said, as I had my TV on.</p> <p>That isn't to say I didn't put my ear to the door and listen a few times, because I definitely did! But, I didn't hear much that I didn't already know, and quickly got bored of the endeavor. I left it up to them to talk about whatever they needed to, without me eavesdropping.</p> <p>As it turned out, my husband's interview was much longer than mine....about 3 1/2 hours compared to the 2 for my interview. This was in spite of all the extraneous chatting the social worker and I did with each other.</p> <p>My husband isn't much of a talker, so this was at first surprising. When we compared notes on our interviews, though, ,the reason for the stark difference in times became clear. He was married twice before me, and has three living (and one deceased) adult children. </p> <p>The social worker asked him in-depth questions about each of those relationships. </p> <p>This is my first marriage, and I don't have any kids of my own yet, so my interview didn't involve all of that extra questioning.</p> <h2>The Home Study Paperwork</h2> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/paperwork.jpg</p> <p>Even with the four weeks or so it took to do all three parts of the home study, I still didn't get all of the paperwork together for it by the end of it. I had to email her a couple of straggling items a few days after the last interview. Each time she came, I had more paperwork I'd completed since her previous visit to give her.</p> <p>I printed out a checklist of things I needed, and checked them off as I handed them in to her.</p> <p>You'd think they already collected everything they needed to know about you during the parenting class, but there was actually so much more they had to get for our file.</p> <p><em><strong>Some of the most memorable items from the home study paperwork checklist include:</strong></em></p> <ul> <li>A monthly budget sheet (I told her right off the bat that it might not make sense, as I'm terrible at math, and i was right....I had to work with her via email on adjusting it so the numbers actually matched up and created a budget she could use)</li> <li>Proof of income for both my husband and me</li> <li>Bank statements and tax returns for the past two years</li> <li>Copies of our birth certificates, drivers' licenses, Social Security cards, and marriage certificate</li> <li>Proof of vaccination of all of our pets (one cat of the four cannot be vaccinated, due to an autoimmune disorder, and I had to get a letter from my veterinarian stating such)</li> <li>Letters of recommendation from five people who know us, only three of whom could be relatives. We ended up using two relatives (mine), and three friends (one of mine and two of my husband's).</li> <li>Letters of recommendation from all three of my husband's adult sons. One of them got his back to us right away. The youngest one had to be reminded several times, but he also eventually sent it back. The biggest surprise was the oldest son, since he and my husband have had a distant, mostly non-speaking relationship for the past few years. He sent his back just before the last social worker interview, and actually said we would make great parents to any kid. I <em><strong>knew</strong></em> my boy would pull through for us (he was the one who lived with us when I first got married)!</li> <li>Proof of current car insurance</li> <li>Pictures of our house and pets, to show to potential adoptive children</li> <li>A letter from us to our potential adoptive child, telling them how we feel about adoption, meeting them, and becoming a family, as well as anything personal we would like the child to know about us</li> </ul> <p>It's a lot of paperwork. I'm probably forgetting some things, too. But, these are the things I remember most.</p> <h1>Step 10--Getting the Home Study Approved</h1> <p>We went about another month without hearing anything. Then, we got an email from our social worker asking us to come into her office to read over our final home study file and give it our approval. We would have an opportunity to make any changes we saw on it that needed to be made.</p> <p>It meant another trip across the county, from our far northeastern corner to her far northwestern corner, which my husband wasn't too keen on, but we'd done it every week for eight weeks for the parenting class. What was one more trip? Besides, the route there took us past our favorite Thai restaurant, where I usually request to go for birthdays and anniversaries, and offers a perfect excuse to pick up some food there to take home with us. </p> <p>We were both presented with stacks of papers upon our arrival. These stacks were two copies of our completed home study, which included the results of our fingerprint checks and criminal background checks, in addition to the social worker's notes on us, our home, our family, and our suitability to be adoptive parents. </p> <p>We sat in the lobby for about 45 minutes reading the material, making corrections with pens when we came across anything that was wrong. We didn't find much that needed correcting, and what did need it was minor stuff.</p> <p>When we were done, our social worker called us back into her office, where an intern and a co-worker were also waiting, to observe the meeting. It was a quick meeting. She basically flipped through every page of the home study until she came to a place where one or the other of us made a correction. She asked us about the correction, then entered the proper information in her computerized version of our home study file. </p> <p>We were then given an opportunity to ask any other questions we may have. There wasn't really much else to ask, as we'd been thoroughly educated on the foster care adoption process at this point.</p> <p>With that, she signed off on our home study. </p> <h3><strong>We were officially approved as adoptive parents!</strong></h3> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/approved.jpeg</p> <h1>Conclusion: Step 11--Actually Adopting a Child (aka What Comes Next)</h1> <p>We got our approval a month ago, after beginning the process back in January. We're still only about 3/4 of the way through actually adopting a kid, but we're so much closer than we were when we started. </p> <p>The important thing now is that we <strong>CAN</strong> adopt a kid. We are fully approved adoptive parents with our state's Department of Children and Families. Getting that approval alone felt like reason for a celebration.</p> <p><em><strong>What happens next is this:</strong></em></p> <ul> <li>We can look at the children available for adoption on the county's website and inquire about any we are interested in. Our social worker will also inform us of any kids who are new to the system and not on the website yet who she feels may be good matches for us.</li> <li>It is requested that we only look in our own county for the first six months. If we haven't found a suitable child by then, we can look on the foster care adoption websites of other counties, or the statewide one, and our social worker will coordinate a potential match with the child's social worker.</li> <li>Once we find a child we're interested in and let our social worker know, we get to review their file, which contains their entire personal history. </li> <li>If, after reading the file, we decide we are still interested in the child, a meeting will be arranged. The first meeting is supervised, and in a public place.</li> <li>If we like the child, and the child likes us, more supervised visits will be arranged.</li> <li>If the supervised visits go well, we will eventually move to unsupervised visits.</li> <li>After a few unsupervised visits, if everything is still good, and we all still like each other, the child can start spending weekends at our house.</li> <li>After a month or two of weekend visits, everyone will discuss whether they want to move forward with the adoption. The child is included in this discussion, and can veto the whole thing if he or she decides we are not the right family for them.</li> <li>If all is cool with everyone involved, the child will move in with us full-time. The goal is to have the child live with us full-time for a minimum of three months. During this time, our social worker will make one scheduled and two un-scheduled visits to us, to see how things are going.</li> <li>After three months of living with us, and the three required visits from the social worker, if everyone is still on board with the adoption, we can go to court and have it finalized. At this point, social services steps out of the picture, and we are the legal parents of that child.</li> </ul> <h2>"The Long and Winding Road"</h2> <p>As you can see, it's a long and complex road to adoption with foster care kids. However, it is so worth it. Most kids act really good at first, so the potential parents will like them. Once they know the parents are interested in adopting them, the kids will usually start to test the commitment of the parents by acting out and trying to push them away; according to the parenting class, this is all typical behavior, and should be expected.</p> <p>These kids have been through a lot, and have learned to not trust adults to stay by them and love them no matter what, even when they say they will. Most of them have been lied to before, and usually more than once. They have to be sure you won't leave them before they can give themselves to you as your child.</p> <p>Once they do, though, the rewards are tremendous, and make the whole process of adopting an older child from foster care worth it in so many ways.</p> <p>I can't wait to meet my future child or children (we might adopt siblings....who knows?). I'm already a mom, according to my state. All I need now is a child. I know that child is coming, and I'm so thrilled to get to know her, love her, and to make her part of my family.</p> <p>http://creatingit.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/adoptive-family.jpg</p> <h3><em>If you enjoyed this post, or any of my other blog articles, please follow me here on Steemit at @stephmckenzie to get updates on my newest posts sent directly to your feed. I'm looking forward to connecting with you.</em></h3> </html>
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