Our home study is done!
I want to shout it from the rooftops!
I want to shout it from the rooftops!
15 pages of our entire life story
3 copies, signed and notarized, arrived in the mail yesterday!
For those new to the adoption lingo, a home study is required for nearly all families prior to proceeding with an adoptive placement, whether interested in domestic or international adoption. Put simply, a home study is a review of us, our family, and our home environment. The main purpose of a home study is to ensure that the child is being placed in a suitable home and that good matches are made between families and children. Home studies are also in place to protect children from being adopted into homes that are unsuitable or unhealthy. An original, notarized, up-to-date (they are good for 18 months) home study is one of the documents that will make up our dossier (a collection of documents that we will eventually send to China) and is required to obtain international clearance to adopt via the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services process.
Before we could even start our in-person meetings with our social worker - we had to compile a series of documents:
- child abuse clearances from all states that we've lived in since we were 18 (which was thankfully only 2 for both of us)
- original birth certificates for all 6 of us
- original marriage license
- SBI (state bureau of investigation) background checks for Adam and I, that required local police department fingerprinting
- monthly income and expenses document
- financial statement
- employment verification for Adam and I
- income tax returns
- medical reports - more involved for Adam and I - also requiring a notarized doctor's letter thoroughly explaining any condition that was checked 'yes' and explaining any medications that are being taken
- medical reports for the kids
- health insurance card
- psychological evaluation (if necessary, thankfully not needed for us)
- pet vaccination record
- guardianship statement
- Hague training certificates (documenting that Adam and I completed at least 10 hours of adoptive training) - another blog for another day - what is the Hague convention?
- 4 references (thanks friends!)
- autobiographical questionnaires from both Adam and I (mine was 8 pages single spaced, I'm nothing if not through)
- The Connected Child questionnaire (after reading The Connected Child, a book about parenting kids from hard backgrounds)
- several other signed forms and agreements
Whew! Thankfully a lot of these documents can/will also be used in our dossier that will be sent to China. We got this list of required documents on 11/3/15 and so the "paper chase" (as this stage of adoption in which you are gathering up and preparing a dossier, is often called) began. Instead of a physical pregnancy, this time around I have a paper pregnancy. You can see why I woke up at 5 am the next morning, 11/4/15 and wrote in my journal that I couldn't sleep because all the paperwork requirements were swirling around in my head and I just figured I might as well get up and get started organizing it. In this paper chase it can be overwhelming, but I found it comforting to just do the next thing... I think this is why Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:34 to "not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious about itself," because he created us and he knows us; he knows that we are so easily overwhelmed when we look into the vast future, so he gave us one thing to focus on... One day at a time, one document at a time, one step closer to our China baby. She is completely worth it.
