[oldenough]

What does it entail? What should *we* expect? I'm in a rural area...and I found someone that does the assesments...I just want to know what the typical assesment is like-JIC

[swanzie]

Well - I don't know what a "typical" one is like - but I sure can tell you what happened in our case.

First let me say - I never had the intention to adopt - this attachment assesment was done to see how the kids were attached with thier bio. We had a series of home visits by a psychologist. He would speak to both my husband and I about the kids and also he would sit with us as a group and each child individually - with the younger one he had her draw pictures of certain things. Now he also did a visit to the bios house and (I don't know how many) and spoke with her about the kids - and so on and so forth - he also went to a couple of the the supervised visits - then he wrote up a report on his assesment on the bond between the children - the children and thier bio - and the children and us. Turns out the children had a better bond with us than with the bio - I guess it had to do with the fact they took care of her not her taking care of them.

Anyway - I never got to see the report - all I got to see was the psychologist testimony at the TPR hearing.

I think they look at how each interacts with each other - how forthcoming the kids are and so many things - and alot has to do with the age of the child on what they expect a natural/healthy bond should be like at that age.

Hope this helps! Good luck with yours!

[oldenough]

Swanzie, Thank you so much for your responce! I'm not sure what to expect from the one we're getting on Monday. It's just to "see where things are" sort of. We're seeing some behaviors, and given our niece's history...we thought we should look into having this done. We're in Montana and her mother is in Oklahoma...Should be interesting.

Thanks again!

[stevenstwin]

With ours, there was a 3 hour assessment done in the bios home - the three kids were brought in from their two separate foster homes for a "visit" and an observer watched and made notes. We were not asked a thing as foster parents, which I though was odd, but the foster parents of the two younger kids were interviewed. Anyway, in our case, the dad didn't even bother to show UP, so I guess he failed! I saw the full report on the mom - and this is kind of interesting. She was judged to be doing a pretty good job and showing good attachment with her own two kids but to be very emotionally and verbally abusive to the oldest, a stepchild to her. This WAS used against her in court! I was suprised by that because I didn't think they'd "count" it, but her abusive behaviour towards the older child was used to suggest that she had poor parenting skills in general.