[julie27]

My husband and I had our first homestudy visit on Friday and it went great! One down, two to go! Our social worker is very nice and encouraging. Hopefully the next two visits will go just as well. I'm just happy that we're finally on our way to getting this done. The homestudy process has been freaking me out!!! At least she did our home inspection on Friday so I don't have to worry about that anymore. Well, everyone have a great week!
Julie

[stella1]

Congrats. I was like you and worried so much and then after we did our first one I realized it was not as awful as I expected. They are really there to help you in this process. By the end of our homestudy's I hugged our social worker and really felt like I had made a friend. She really gave us great information and resources to help us prepare for our adoption.
I hope your process goes as smooth as possible and as speedy as possible. But I'm sure no matter how fast it goes it will seem like a lifetime because you are just so ready to be with your child.

[Delmom]

Julie,

Congratulations! This is certainly an exciting time. I remember every step was a milestone. I felt like I was one step closer to my child. Keep us posted on how everything goes for you!

[dlbmcgill]

Julie,


Congratulations! I know exactly how you feel. Our SW is coming on the 23rd, but we've had several meetings at the office, so we're almost done with our homestudy. Keep us informed about your progress. Feel free to PM me if you want to "talk" to someone who's at the same point in the process as you.

Good luck with the other visits.

Debbie

[julie27]

My husband and I had our second homestudy visit today and we had the best possible outcome. Our SW stayed at our house from 9:00 to 12:40 but it went by so fast that we were shocked when we looked at the clock after she left. Anyway, she was able to finish everything and we are now officially approved! We just have to wait for her to type everything up. I just can't believe how quickly it went. From our first call from her, it only took 2 1/2 weeks. She says it should only take her a week to type her recommendation. We got blessed with an awesome SW!! We're just so happy because we know now that it is actually going to happen. We're actually finally going to have the baby we've wanted for sooooo long! Thank you all for the congratulations and I hope you all have a great weekend!
Julie

[dlbmcgill]

Congratulations Julie! That's great that she was able to get everything done so quickly. Have you sent in your I600A yet or started getting together all the "stuff" for you dossier? Hopefully you'll be bringing your child home in no time!

[julie27]

Thanks dlbmcgill! I filed our I-600A today and will be starting our dossier some time this week. My husband, being the analytical man that he is, wanted to wait until we were approved before going on to the next step. But now that we are, we're going to do everything as quickly as possible. Hopefully we won't have to wait very long for our INS approval since our completed homestudy will be sent in very soon. I've heard different things about the office we're using. Some say that it takes three months, but I just talked to someone that said it only took three weeks from the time their homestudy got there. I guess we'll have to wait and see (the story of my life!). I hope things go quickly for you as well. Have you filed your I-600A yet? I hope you had a great weekend. Best of luck to all!
Julie

[babystork]

Congrats Julie to your first homestudy visit. I was wondering if you or anyone could elaborate on the type of questions that are being asked?

[2Bulgarianbeauties]

Julie, the difference in the 3 weeks versus 3 months is that usually people send in their INS form without the homestudy to get the process rolling and the fingerprints scheduled. The homestudy gets sent in when complete, and thus it is only 3 weeks later that everything is approved. Michigan takes 3 months. It is about 2 - 2 1/2 months after you send in the paperwork before you can get a fingerprint appointment.

Congrats on the homestudy compete!

Kay

[julie27]

Thanks Kay. Since I last posted we've had our fingerprints taken and we just got our homestudy to review today. Hopefully it will be at BCIS by next week sometime. We also got our agency contract today so things are starting to roll again. We were at a bit of a standstill for a few weeks because we finished our part of the dossier but were having to wait on the agency's part and the homestudy part. So, I'm glad that we had some news today. It was needed. Hopefully we'll have our I-171H very, very soon.
Babystork,
I think the questions probably differ for each social worker. Ours asked us questions about our childhood (relationships with sibilings, parents, friends, school involvement, our parents approach to discipline, ect.). She also asked us how we met, how we resolve conflict, what we like about each other (and dislike), how we plan to discipline our child, what values and traditions we plan to pass on, ect. She also wanted to know our work histories and how we feel about our current jobs. We also went over our medical histories (including infertility and infertility treatments, if applicable) and we had to fill out a few financial forms that had our assests and liabilities as well as monthly income and monthly expenses. She also asked about community involvement, how we're planning on keeping our baby's culture in his life, what we're doing to get ready to parent an adopted child, and what experience we've had with children. It sounds very involved and very overwhelming, but for me the homestudy was a pleasant surprise. It was almost like talking to a friend. We had a good social worker that was very relaxed an reassuring. So prepare, but don't get too worked up over it. Our social worker told us she could count on one hand the number of people she's had to disapprove and she's been doing this for over 20 years! I hope this helps and let me know how your homestudy goes. Have you started it yet?

Julie

[babystork]

Thanks Julie, yes your answer helped a lot. I see that the questions are very similar in nature to the questions in the autobiography I have to write. This way I am forced to think about these questions I just sent out the application for the homestudy agency this morning, but since I already received a list of paperwork to complete, I started on quite a few of them.

Thanks again
Sette

[julie27]

Sette,

We also had to complete an autobiography and basically the majority of the homestudy was going over the autobiography and elaborating on what we had written. Good luck on the paperwork. If you already have an agency in mind, you may want to see if they can send you their medical forms because when we did our homestudy we didn't have an agency chosen yet and when it we got ready to start compiling the dossier we had to redo the medical forms because the dossier format was different than the homestudy format. It wasn't really a big deal to redo them, though, so if you don't have an agency yet don't stress yourself trying to find one. Good luck and let me know how your first visit goes. Do you have a date yet?
Julie

[babystork]

Unfortunately, I have not yet set a date for the first visit. I am reluctant to send the rest of the paperwork until I hear back from them if they received my application. I left several voice mails and emails but this homestudy agency does not seem to be that swift in responding back. I wonder if that is normal depending on their workload or if I just picked a bad agency

[julie27]

When did you send in your application? We got a call within a few days of their receiving ours and within a week I had already spoken with our social worker. Not everything went as quickly as we were told, though. It's taken them alot longer to get our final draft done than what we expected. We were told that it would only take two or three weeks at the most and it's been over six. Sometimes I think the home study agencies don't understand how anxious we are to get things going. Also, social workers are greatly overworked.

[babystork]

The homestudy agency received my application and my paperwork and surprised me with a call at work to schedule the first in-home visit - August 22nd in the evening. I wonder if my husband and I should have some finger food ready. Not sure how long that first visit will be

Julie, let us know about your progress. You probably already had your second visit. I wonder how far apart these home visits are? Also, does everybody wait for the homestudy to be finished before starting the dossier?