The purpose of the home study is to tell a story about you and your family. The social workers come to your home at least a couple of times, they will look around your home, meet with all family members, and spend hours talking about your lives together.
Our home study started with a meeting, in our home, with a social worker. She went over and explained all of the paperwork she needed us to complete, and she went over the process again so that we would know what to expect. The entire first meeting took all of about fifteen minutes.
The next step in this part of the process was to complete the paperwork. This took us at least a few weeks. There were piles of consent forms to sign and applications/forms to fill out. There was also a long list of documentation we needed to obtain copies of. The most difficult and time intensive part of this paperwork was a questionnaire that detailed basically every aspect of our lives; Our personalities, our children’s personalities, our parenting style, our marriage, our personal strengths and weaknesses as well as our goals. There were questions about our home and our neighborhood. Inquiries as to why we wanted to adopt, what we expected from an adopted child, what we expected from our children. It even asked about our own parents and our childhood. The social worker asked that we contact her when we were almost done so she could schedule another meeting.
The second meeting took a lot longer. That questionnaire I mentioned? We went over every answer in detail. She read through every answer we gave, asked us more questions about what we had written, requested that we go into more detail in some areas, and she took notes. This meeting took a couple hours.
After this meeting, the social worker compiled everything into a twelve page document… our entire lives in twelve pages… which she emailed back to us to review and sign.
The end result of this process was rather anti-climactic. At least for me, it was. I was expecting some monumental moment! I was expecting a celebration of sorts! “We’re approved!!” But it didn’t happen. I received an email, I printed out the signature page, we signed it, and we put it in an envelope to mail back. That’s it! We’re done. I guess it was a relief to have that part of the process done with and out of the way, but it wasn’t quite as exciting as I had imagined it would be!
A couple things we learned:
- You don’t have to worry too much over the meetings that take place in your home. The social worker wants to see how you really live. They don’t expect you to do any massive cleaning, they don’t expect you to serve them food, and they don’t want you to make a big deal out of the visit. As long as you, like most people, generally keep your home in a relatively livable/presentable condition, it will be okay. They want to see the real you, they want to get to know your real family, and they want an idea of what your day to day life is really like. They don’t want you to put on a show for them.
- You don’t have to hide your flaws. In fact, your flaws will be embraced. When filling out questionnaires and answering questions, do so as fully and as honestly as you can. They want real, honest families for these children, not some picture-perfect home with a June Cleaver as a mom. Real people with real problems and real struggles are more likely to be able to connect with and relate to the children they are trying to place. Your flaws, your struggles in life, are seen as strengths, not weaknesses. Be proud of what you have faced and overcome, don’t try and sweep it under the rug.