Step Two - The Home Study

In order to be eligible to adopt, you must successfully complete a home study.  A home study includes three to four interview sessions between you/your family and a caseworker.  We found ourselves so fortunate to be working with a beautiful Christian caseworker, who melted the hearts of our children and made the whole experience such a pleasure.  Because we are quite a distance from the adoption agency they contract with our caseworker who lives in Dallas to complete home studies in our area. To cut down on the length of time to qualify she recommended that we try and cover all our interviews in just two sessions!! It would mean a lengthy interview process each time but we were happy to work this way.

Our first session took place on Saturday July 7th from 10am until 4.30pm!!  Dave and I had individual interviews done that day which covered all of our history growing up in our own birth families, our relationships with each family member both then and now, our marriage relationship and our relationship with each one of our children. Lastly we covered our relationship with the Lord and our spiritual lives.  

At the end of this time we set the next date to complete our home study which would include a joint interview with Dave and I focusing on questions related to our views on adopted children and their birth parents, how we manage our finances, our child rearing practices, ideas on discipline, how we would handle some of the deprivations that adopted children may exhibit. It would also include an individual interview with both of our girls and finally the 'walk through' of our home to make sure it was clean and safely maintained and met the fire safety code.  That date was set for August 11th.

So we had a month to get new smoke alarms installed in each bedroom, a fire extinguisher placed in the kitchen and familiarize ourselves with its use, a fire escape plan written down and practiced and a hearth gate installed to secure the fire place, carpets cleaned, medicines stored in a combination lock box and cleaning supplies locked in the garage cupboard.  The final paperwork had to be compiled to include marriage certificate, W2's, birth certificates, green card, policy pages for all insurances, TB skin tests administered and results obtained from the local health department, medical physicals for each family member and vaccination records for the girls and the cat!!!  It was a constant stream of activity and in between times we've been pouring over application papers from adoption assistance foundations to help us raise the money to pay for our child at the time of placement!!   A month like no other month has flown by and here we are Home Study behind us and now waiting to receive the official word from the agency that we have successfully qualified....