[Spring09]

Has anyone else experienced fees outside the expected in their homestudy? We have a six month lapse between social worker visits and our homestudy agency is charging us $350 for an additional visit (so that we will have two visits close together). We have also been invoiced for things I thought would be included in the cost of the homestudy (ie. $50 for mandatory class). Our California homestudy (International) will end up costing over $3000.

Does this seem right to you? I don't like paying the additional fees and we've been going back and forth with the director about it.

[cborsa7]

I'm not in California but can tell you our home study for International was 1200.00 total. We did pay for a mandatory internet Hague class, I think it was 50.00. We knew all the costs upfront.
I'm not following why you had an additional visit for the 6 months?
Hope everything works out for you.

[Spring09]

California homestudies always seem to cost more than other states - when researching agencies I'd say that $2500 is the norm.

The agency said that when there are social visits lapses, the social worker needs an additional visit to catch up. I was annoyed when the director said this is "common sense."

We weren't moving ahead with our paperwork at all during the lapse, we'd been considering other options (ivf, domestic adoption) and honestly got involved with other projects (home remodel) but still, we would have picked up the pace had we known we were going to pay $350 and have to do another social worker visit. They didn't tell us that we would incur an additional cost if there were lapses.

Our experience with this homestudy agency has not been good, but we are so close to finishing we're just going to grit our teeth, pay their additional fees, tolerate their ridiculous arrogance and be done with them.