My husband and I reside in the state of Oregon. When we decided we were going to adopt, we didn’t know where to start. Though states vary in how their steps are outlined, my hope is that our experience will give you some idea of how the state adoption process can work.
1. We went to the Government pages in our phone book and looked for our county’s Department of Human Services (DHS). In other states it may be department of social or human services or recourses. Each state has a different name for their program. Sometimes just calling the receptionist and letting them know you are interested in adoption can get you directed to the appropriate department.
2. We got notification of an orientation for adoptive and foster families. This preceded the weeks of our training class that informed us about the special needs of children in the foster care system.
3. For those who weren’t scared off after the weeks of training, they were presented with a packet to begin their home study process. In this packet was the following:
- Application for adoption. Here we could choose what special needs we were open to, race, age, gender, etc…
- Pages upon pages of essay questions that would later be used for each of our biographies for our home study. By the time this was filled out, I was sure our case worker would know almost everything about us.
- Reference requests were included so that the state could send a questionnaire or call our selected friends and family to get further information on us. Their responses were kept completely confidential.
- A medical report form for our family doctor to fill out stating whether she felt we were healthy enough to care for a special needs child. During this visit, the form requested TB testing.
- Once the packet was submitted, we went in to our DHS for finger printing and an FBI background check. Once this came back, we were assigned a case worker.
- Our case worker interviewed my husband and me together, then separately. This was to determine if we would be qualified to adopt and to gather further information that would go into the biography for our home study.
- Our home had to be approved for foster children since, technically that is what our child would be until the adoption finalizes. We made sure we had smoke detectors in the appropriate places, a fire escape ladder on the second floor and that medicines were out of a child’s reach.
- Once all the documents were competed, signed, returned and approved, they were ready to be certified by our state’s central office and we could begin looking at waiting children.
I wish I could say this process was fast. I have heard some people say they were certified with in a few months. It took us 8 months for our approval. In the end, I’m sure the state of Oregon knew more about us than we did. The reward of getting to be parents was worth it though. 11 months later we were blessed with our 13 month old son.
(Melissa is a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog)