[Doxie]

Hi! I was hoping someone knows the answer to this. I am kind of friking out right now! We just had our home study done last night. I asked the guy if he is going to approve us for a specific age child. He told me no. He doesn't really do that. I knew I had read on here some people talking about the age they were approved for. So I email a SW lady who I was going to get to do our HS. She replies back and tells me the Minimum Standards for the State of Texas as well as the United States Citizenship & Immigration (INS) requires that the HS approve us for children within an age range. She also told me the HS must also address wheather or not we are open to special needs children &, if so, what special needs we are willing to accept!! He went into NOTHING like that! It was very short and to the point. Asked about our families, work, hobbies, realationships, backgrounds, and then looked around our house. Then told us we are okay and he will have the paper work back in a few weeks. That was it!?! Nothing about age of children or special needs. Does anyone know if the above has to be mentioned for Ukraine??

[plgorzell]

Hello,

I just re-read our homestudy that was done only last year in October. We are also from Texas, and I did not see anywhere within the narrative that we specified an age.

I did see that where we specified a healthy child that might have minor correctable medical conditions, but like I said nothing about an age.

Pam

[orphanagemom]

It also depends on where you are adopting from. Every country requires different information in the Homestudy. I probably would have suggested to find your agency first, then have them give you the requirements for the homestudy. We went to the Philippines. We applied with the adoption agency, and they told us to have the homestudy person call and request the requirements that the Philippines requires to be in the homestudy, and yes one of them was to say what type and age of child we were wanting to adopt. We have neighbors who got "jipped" from someone doing their homestudy a year or so ago. They said when they finally (after months and months) got their copy, it was written horribly, and she could have written up a much better and more detailed one - they also never got approved or got their child. We paid $500, and ours was extremely professional, and very detailed, and we had it back in 3 weeks. Good luck to you, and I hope it works out.
Jen

[Doxie]

Thank you for your replies! Since we are adopting from Ukraine we are not using an agency. I asked the guy if he was licensed for international HS and he told me yes.....he has done them since the 80's. I find out now that he has only done about 5 international total. I called to let him know what I originally posted and he told me he will check into and call me back to revise it. So, hopefully everything will work out! I just don't know if for Ukraine we HAVE to have that stuff mentioned.

[Bzymom]

I wonder if you've checked any Ukraine gov't websites to see if that information is available. I know for Russia the HS has to list the age. In fact, we had to get our HS updated because when we got the referral, she was older than what we were technically approved for in our original HS.

Don't panic. It will all work out. It's good that you are being proactive now and not waiting until later down the line when you have a referral to check into this.