By the time your application to adopt a child from the state foster care system has made it to the top of the pile and you are assigned an adoption social worker you will be over the initial excitement of the decision to adopt. There is a part of me that believes the process starts so slow intentionally. At this point families acting impulsively will have dropped out and only the die hard, trained parents willing to jump over any hurdle are left. The reality is that with any government program time is measured differently and things tend to take forever.
If you make it to the point home study interviews are starting congratulations you are one of the strong and patient families who make it this far and your home study is on the way to being completed. Just keep in mind that just like all the other steps this one will not be done as quickly as you wish.
It would be impossible to write an article that outlines how all 50 states complete the adoption home study because each state has their own methods, rules and process. Some families will have turned in supporting documents such as birth certificates, marriage certificates, prior divorces decrees, and financial documents. Other states will collect this information during the interviewing process.
I will write here about how this part of the home study went for us. Keep in mind things change and every case is handled in the process your state decides. For our home study it took about eight weeks before we were contacted by our adoption social worker. During this phone call we were told which steps were completed and what the next few steps would be. Our adoption social worker made an appointment to meet us both in our home for a first interview. During this interview we were to provide all of the supporting documentations, the birth certificates and marriage records as well as our financial tax records for the past three years.
Our first interview our worker reviewed our original application and asked some specific questions about what we had written on our application. He also looked at our documents and quickly reviewed for any possible problems. The majority of this interview was procedural and about being sure we had all of our paperwork together. We signed the release forms to have our medical and mental health doctors provide records. Basically it was a “get to know you” meeting.
Our adoption social worker told us about his experience and about his role in the future of the home study and the eventual placement of children in our home. He made an effort to make it clear he would be representing us and that he would let us know if he felt there might be any reason we would not be able to adopt a child from foster care. As the interview went on everyone became more comfortable and we were asked about our interests that did not relate to parenting issues. How we met and fell in love and why we wanted to adopt special needs siblings.
At the end of the first interview he set up appointments to meet with each of us separately and advised us those meetings would be long, usually three hours. He also made appointments to meet with my adult children privately for a confidential interview and asked how they feel about our plans to adopt more children. I let him know one of my two children did not favor our plans to adopt. I was worried how his interview might impact our home study and plans for adoption. Apparently it is very common for the older children to “have problems” with the adoption plans and the social workers are skilled at seeing the issues older children may try to cause.
Some adoption social workers may not handle their caseloads the same way and sometimes families have changes in their worker during the process. We were lucky to have a skilled and experienced adoption worker who made an effort to be approachable and friendly. Not all workers will show this sort of dedication to adoptive families. The most important thing to keep in mind is not to blame the worker for any delays, changes or problems that will come up along the way. Usually, your worker will play a key role in the entire process from this point until a match is made and a placement found.
The following interviews were intense and our worker spent a lot of time talking with us about the answers we had given on our original application. His job was to take our application and the notes from all of the interviews and write a full document about who we are and why we would be good parents for children from the foster care system.
When our adoption worker was finished writing our 36 page home study we had one step left before our application and home study could be sent to the state head office. We needed to have our home safety inspection. Which will be the topic of my next entry here.
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For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.