I was really worried about our first international adoption homestudy. I was so scared that we wouldn’t “pass” and that our dreams of adopting would be out the window. I really stressed about it. We cleaned our house from top to bottom – all of the closets, the refrigerator, etc. We put child-proof locks on all of the cabinets. Our house was perfect.
As it turned out, we worried way too much. I think the social worker took a grand total of two minutes to look around our house. He didn’t open any closets. He didn’t open the refrigerator. He didn’t check for any child-proof locks. Basically, we got the impression that he was looking for major hazards like falling ceilings or blocked exits. The rest didn’t seem to matter too much.
After his tiny tour of our home, our social worker sat down on the couch and we basically just talked for a while. He asked us about why we wanted to adopt, what kind of parents we planned to be, what our dreams were for our child. It really was very comfortable and non-threatening.
At one point, he interviewed us each individually to ask questions about our backgrounds. I guess that was in case we hadn’t told each other something about our pasts. Since neither of us have ever been in trouble this wasn’t a big deal for us either.
Overall, the homestudy was pretty easy. I wish I hadn’t worried about it so much. I will say, though, that I probably won’t do things much differently next time. I’ll still clean everything and vacuum under the furniture – just on the off chance that our next social worker decides to look. But, I won’t be so concerned that we won’t pass. Instead, I’ll just think of it as one more step we have to take towards our child and I know that every single step is worth it.