Adoption Backstory: Early adoption processes- Adoption Agencies and Home Study

I usually let out a sigh when I have to tell people that we started our adoption process all the way back in 2009. Time has certainly flown by fast, now that I am at the other end of that tunnel, with our daughter home with us. But it really felt like an extremely long journey and it really was! There is so much to share, and this post will be way too long, so I will have to break it up to share some of the backstory.

We worked with two agencies. One was the international agency that was housed in another state altogether, and they dealt with the orphanage in Ind*a.  For all our local needs such as home study and local state court processes and clearances, we had to use a local agency that had partnered with the international agency before. I had spoken with another adoptive mother that had gone with these two agencies and I felt comfortable with them. I have had friends who lived in the same state as their international agency, so they did not need to have a separate agency to do their home study. The international agency was all that they dealt with.

Spring of 2009 is when we started the initial process of adoption meetings with the local agency, the preliminary applications and reference letters from friends, family and our son's teacher. At that time our son had just turned 5 years and we put in an age range of 0-24 months for the home study.

*Unbeknownst to us obviously, our daughter was born, just a month after I started making our initial calls to the agencies. I just didn't find out about her till the last 6 months of our journey.

 During my first "informational meeting" with the local agency, I completely misread what the social worker was saying, to the point that I started stalling. It was more of an issue of lack of adoption education on our part and perhaps not communicating well. It was a classic case of "lost in translation".  Eventually we were better educated, and translated our thought process better, and were back in the swing of things. We had our first home study visit from the same social worker in November of 2009. We were able to communicate much better this time around and we were more comfortable.The social worker came back to our home for a few more visits. To say that she "checked us out" is an understatement. She really did look at so many aspects of our life and our home. In addition to learning about our own family, home, neighborhood, jobs, our own childhood experiences, our educational and professional backgrounds, our future plans, our parenting philosophies, she also asked about our respective parents, siblings and also our friends. It was quite extensive. She even took a tour of the house to see what arrangements we could make once our baby was home. She was very thorough in what she did and clearly loved her job. It was a pleasure working with her.

* Lesson- Misunderstandings and miscommunication can occasionally add on a few weeks or months to your timeline. Ask questions right away, clarify it, and don't hesitate because all it will do is delay your process. You will think about that lost time, especially toward the end when the wait to travel is so difficult.