53. Adoption Home-study

Hello, everyone! Mama S here. Our family is settling into a new normal and we are looking forward to 2019. In early 2019 we will be adopting our 16 year old and, in preparation of that, we have more paperwork to do. We were assigned an adoption worker and will be going through the home-study process in these next few months.

What does that mean for us? Well-  it is much like our foster parenting home study. We were assigned a worker that comes out to the house to interview us together and apart. She will interview our kiddos and close family and friends. Additionally, we have about 50 pages of paperwork to do and have to pull together our financials. Some of the paperwork:

• background forms- we need our backgrounds run again
• finger prints- we had to release our fingerprints and that report will be pulled
• family budget and expenses- including copies of all our bills/assets/income
• questionnaires
• safety plans
• references
• doctor sign off that we are healthy enough for adopting a kiddo
• plan for how we plan to meet her needs once workers are no longer assigned the case

Think buying a house meets getting a job at a top tier daycare and then multiply it by a bit 

We will be having sit down meetings over the next few months, we have a few classes to take that are focused on our little lady’s needs, and then we will be cleared for adoption! We have to get everything in line before a specific date so that the adoption will proceed as scheduled! This is a very invasive process, but very important so that the state can know that we are a good family for this kiddo for the long term. There would be nothing worse than a kiddo having to come back into care after an adoption because the family can’t handle the kiddos behaviors/financial needs/medical needs of the family.

Next up- we will talk about how the family is doing and some of the feelings that are coming up in our house with the upcoming adoption… teaser… they are not all sunshine and roses.

Until next time!

Mama S