The Adoption Home Study: Should You Be Nervous?

Many prospective adoptive families feel anxious about the home study. Our guest, Sheila Kowit, is an adoption social worker with Adoptions From the Heart. She prepares home studies for both domestic infant and international adoptions. She explains what the process is like, what you can expect, and what you will learn in the home study process.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What is an adoption home study?
  • Is it possible to get one home study that can be used with all types of adoptions: domestic infant, foster care, and international adoption?
• What is the purpose of the adoption home study?
• At what point in the adoption process is the home study usually done in domestic infant adoption?
  • In international adoption?
• How long does it take to complete an adoption home study in domestic infant adoption?
  • In international adoption
• How much does an adoption home study cost for domestic infant adoption?
  • For international adoption
• What information can the prospective adoptive parents expect to compile for a domestic infant adoption home study? How does this differ for international adoption?
  • Medical history
  • Statements of income and assets
  • Autobiographical statements
  • References
• What, if any, are the physical health concerns:
  • For international adoption, consult our Adoption Comparison Charts 
  • Do you have to have a current physical?
  • What to do about getting a medical physical if you don’t have a regular primary doctor. Can you go to Urgent Care clinics or Minute Clinics for an adoption physical?
• Can you do domestic infant adoption if you or your partner/spouse has a mental health diagnosis? What about international adoption?
  • For international adoption, consult our Adoption Comparison Charts 
• Criminal background concerns for domestic infant adoption? For international adoption?
  • DUIs, misdemeanors, expunged records?
  • It is important to be honest and share it all with your social worker.
• What gets included in the financial portion of the home study for domestic infant adoption? For international adoption?
  • Income, liabilities, and assets assessment
  • Documentation necessary
  • Check country listings at our Adoption Comparison Charts or USCIS Intercountry Adoption Information 
• Writing your personal history for a domestic infant? And for international?

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Welcome to the Creating a Family podcast. I'm Tracy Whitney, the content manager for
Creating a Family. Many of you have already heard the news that our executive
director, Dawn Davenport, will be retiring this year. I've been co -hosting with her
off and on this spring and learning the ropes as eventually I will become the
podcast host. Today, I'm hosting solo, but have no fear, Dawn isn't gone yet,
and you'll have plenty of other opportunities to hear from her before she retires.
I'm excited today to talk with my friend Sheila Cohen. We met several years ago
through our local adoptive mom community and I know she'll be a great resource for
today's topic. Sheila is an adoption social worker with adoptions from the heart and
adoptions from the heart is a non -profit domestic open adoption agency licensed in
six states on the East Coast. They are celebrating their 40th anniversary of serving
the adoption community this year. In her capacity at Adoptions from the Heart, Sheila
prepares home studies for domestic infant adoption and international adoption, and she
provides counseling and support for expectant and birth parents and adoptive parents.
Welcome, Sheila. I'm so glad to have you on the show today. Thank you. I'm excited
to be here. We're looking forward to talking about adoption home studies and what
you need to know and how to allay any fears or nervousness that you might have as
prospective adoptive parents. So we're going to jump right in and we're going to
start with basically a working definition of what is the adoption home study. The
adoption home study unlike what many people think is not a study of your home.
While that is a piece of it, the home study overall is an opportunity for the
agency to get to know you, to get to understand you, and to assess you and to see
how appropriate you are to be able to be placed with a child through adoption. I
heard on a recent Creating Family podcast that talked about how to adopt in 2025
that the adoption home study should be looked at as a process as well as a
product. It is a full process that you go through where you are assessed and
evaluated by the agency. We learn about who you are, how you came to the decision
to adopt, and then we make a determination as to whether or not we find that you
are fit for this. So when you're doing a home study for a family,
is it possible to get one home study that works for all the types of adoption? You
would have a home study that would talk about what you are approved for in the
state in which you live. So if you wanted to do a domestic infant adoption, which
is what our agency mostly focuses on, we would assess you for the opportunity to
adopt in that manner. If you were looking to adopt through an international process,
you would also need to be working with an agency that would facilitate that adoption
with you. And then we would work with that see to see what criteria was necessary
specific to the country you were looking to adopt from and then make determinations
based on that to work into your home study as well. So maybe a little bit of
tweaking and adjusting if you are looking for an international adoption home study,
your process with that family would be just a little bit different than it would be
for say a domestic infant adoption. Sure, because each country has its criteria and
its qualifications that it's looking for. So we need to make sure that we address
those things as well. Great, great. Thank you. In order to educate and prepare these
families, at what point do you start the process of a home study? And is it
different in international adoption than it would be, say, for domestic infant
adoption? The home study has to happen first, initially, because you have to be home
study approved in order to be considered for placement. The process of home study
would vary depending on the agency that you work with, but the way our agency does
it, we really find it critical to get to know you, to understand you, and to make
sure that you are educated in the aspects of adoption that we find most relevant
and most critical as your parenting and adoptee. So we would meet with you several
times before we would even sit down to start talking about what the criteria are
for the home study. We have what's called a pre -counseling session when you first
apply to the agency where you come in and meet with the social worker. It's a get
to know you session, not only for us to get to know them a little bit, but for
them to get to know us and what our processes and procedures are and kind of get
a sense of the timeline for the process. At the pre -adopt session, we'll also be
determining what education level you're at and what you may need to have in terms
of education in order to be at a point where you're be able to be approved for
certain aspects of adoption and the child that you'd like to be placed with. So
what do I mean by that? Our agency is the end domestic open adoption agency.
So we need to make sure that you understand what open adoption is, what the
importance is of having a connection with birth family, of having the child
understand what it is to be an adoptee and how they got to this process. We also
place our families with children of different races. So we need to make sure that
you have an understanding of what it is to be a transracial adoptive family and the
facets that are involved with having a child in your home that is of a race
different of yours. Along with that, we also talk about intersectionality and we have
courses related to being a child or person that identifies in a way that may be
different than way their parents identify. So we want to make sure that education is
complete, as well as giving the families the tools to help educate others in their
lives who are going to be a part of their child's life. So the education piece is
something that is also going to be incorporated in that rework before we actually
sit down to start the home study. So it sounds like it takes several meetings and
it happens over a period of maybe several months. Yes, correct. So we have a
timeline that from start to finish, it could take about six to nine months before
we're actually at a home study approval point. Okay. And is that different for the
international adoption home studies that you write? Well, with the international,
again, there may be facets of a country that the person is adopting from that may
need to be incorporated so that could have an impact on the timeline. But generally
the timeline's pretty consistent. - And with international adoption home studies, you're
doing a lot of the same type of educating, country -specific, culture -specific, race
-specific. - Sure, we're certainly not necessarily addressing that individual country's
culture, but we want people to think about what it means to be parenting a child
of a different race and culture. And how are they going to make sure that those
things are addressed in the life of their child as they're parenting that child? And
in general, can you speak to the cost of an adoption home study for we'll start
with domestic infinite option? The average cost would be about $2 to $3 ,000.
There may be additional fees if education courses are necessary. In our full program,
those courses are required. But if you're coming in with needing us just to write a
home study for an international adoption, which would be called home study only,
we would determine whether or not you needed that education and if those courses
should be added in or if you've sufficiently been educated through your placing
agency or through other means. And we should note at this point that some placing
agencies wrap the cost of education into that flat fee that they would call their
home study fee and some itemize it separately and differently. Yes, correct.
And if nothing else you should ask for clarification and transparency on all of
those costs so that you know exactly what is being accounted for in those costs.
Let me pause for a moment and thank our partners, Vista Del Mar. Vista Del Mar is
a licensed, non -profit, adoption agency with over 65 years of experience helping
create families. They offer home study -only services, as well as full -service, infant
adoption, international home study and post -adoption, and foster -to -adopt programs for
families. You can find them online at mr .org /adoptions.
We are grateful for their support. All right. So when a family is moving into the
home study process, what kind of information should they expect to provide to their
home study agent? And what documentation are they looking for and maybe speak a
little bit as to how they go ahead and compile that, where they put it, what they
do with it once they get it. - Sure, as I stated, this is an assessment process
and we are consistently and constantly throughout the process doing assessment and
evaluation. So we have those pre -counsel meetings, we have home study session
meetings where we talk specifically about the requirements of the home study document.
We also use those meetings as opportunities again to get to know to dig deeper into
what is your motivation for adoption. How did you get to this point? Were there
issues with fertility? What was your family like? How were you raised? How would you
parent? What are parenting skills that you have? So all of these things are
discussed in our home study sessions. They're also addressed in your home study
autobiography. And that's a really big document that we ask for our parents to
prepare for us, along with the logistical information about their lives,
the financial information and the education and those kinds of things. But that
autobiography really is a very key piece because it asks really intimate questions
about you, who you are, your family, how you were raised, your education,
what scrapes did you have as a child? Maybe with the law, what failures did you
have? What successes did you have? If you are a couple, how did you come together
as a couple? How did you determine that this was the one for you? So it really
asks you to dig deep into who you are as a person and how you got to this point.
And I've had families come back to me and say that they were so grateful for that
process because it really, really solidified for them their reasons behind coming to
adoption and why they value adoption and how connected they are to it. So as
daunting a task as it may be when you sit down to do it, because I've had people
come to me and say, "Chila, I've been writing 10 pages already. Is that too much?
when do I need to stop?" And I'm like, "Keep going." 'Cause that's how I get to
know you and that's how I get to assess you and make sure that this is where
you're supposed to be. The autobiography is a big, big piece of the paperwork that
they need to put together. - And it's probably useful for those who are already
parenting to know that those questions will be included. How have you parented your
children thus far? One piece that both my husband and I found pretty daunting when
we were doing our international adoption studies was talking about how we were
parented, kind of the philosophy maybe that our parents held when they were raising
us. How did they discipline us? How did they reward us? How did they, you know,
acknowledge our growth and milestones, things like that? It felt like between the
combination of the interviews and then the self -writing that we had to do, the self
-assessments that we had to do in our own writing felt very deep and introspective
and in some ways a little probing, but you know, now that we're on the other side
of it, we can see the value of that as you mentioned at the beginning. So yeah, I
wholeheartedly agree with that. Do you see that international adoption home studies
and domestic infant adoption home studies differ greatly in the actual documentation
that families are required to compile, like the birth certificates and things like
that. Yeah, no, I haven't because the regulations for the home study are state
specific. So you're creating a home study that is approving you to adopt a child
and according to the laws and regulations of the state in which you live. So, the
paperwork, the stuff that you're pulling together that goes way beyond if you've
purchased a home, way beyond what you can think of for your mortgage, those are
state -specific. If there are things that are needed, again, in an international
study, then the placing agency would indicate what was needed for that country,
otherwise you're going to follow state -specific regulations. And those items that And
it is, it is a lot, you're going to take, we give our families several months
after we've had our home study sessions and meetings, we give them several months to
pull these documents together before we sit down to write their home study. There
are certain policies that they have to agree to within our agency regarding
discipline. And for us, they have questionnaires relating to transracial adoption.
They have medical examination forms that they have to do. They have to have all
their clearances, you know, from my state of Pennsylvania, it's Pennsylvania criminal
background check, child abuse check, and then there's a PA fingerprint that has to
be done for that other clearance. If they've lived outside of the state within a
certain number of years, there are going to be clearances from the other states in
which they lived. They have to give us information about of employment,
verification of employment, verification of income, their tax returns. If they own a
home, they need to give us copies of their lease and their deeds. If they own
rental properties, if they don't own a home but are renting, then like I said,
they need their lease. They need to tell us if they're writing liens or bankruptcies
that they've had. They need to let us know if they've ever been a foster parent.
We need information of that. If the home study was ever completed in another state,
we need information about that. We need verification of income for the last 10 years
through the Social Security Administration. So we have pretty extensive requirements,
health insurance, car insurance, life insurance. So it's going to take some real
digging to pull all the paperwork together for submission. Marriage licenses,
birth certificates of the children living in the home, all that. That's a lot of
paperwork and a lot of running around to get things notarized and stamped and
approved. When we talk about the medical history, you touched on that a little bit,
they're asked to complete medical history documentation. Are you aware of any specific
medical diagnoses that could present maybe a yellow flag or a red flag for a home
study agent and how does that get handled if there are red flags like that?
Sure. I think it's important to note we're not doctors, we're not lawyers, we're
social workers. And so the reason that we ask people for these verifications is that
so the experts can give us information and feedback as to what the condition is of
the applicant. So if there is a medical form done and they've gone to their doctor
that they have a history with, then the doctor is going to tell us and the form
requests an answer to whether or not this person is in good medical health to be
able to care for a child. You know, what is the what is the degree of their
health? Is it excellent? Is it good? Is it fair? Is it poor? Like we're going to
rely on the medical professional to give us that feedback. If there's something on
there that needs further qualification or further explanation, then we'll ask for it.
But we're gonna rely on the professional to give us the go ahead as to whether or
not they deem the person fit to take on this responsibility. - Okay, so that might
be a situation then when a doctor says, yes, they've been on medication for, say,
depression. And then the next step would be that a home study agent might recommend
us sit down with a with a psych for an evaluation and kind of a vetting in that
process. Correct? Sure. So if the person has presented with a mental health
condition, we're going to ask for, you know, they signed HIPAA forms with us. So we
asked to be able to speak with their doctors, their therapist, their psychiatrist,
and we're going to again dig a little deeper in is this person in treatment? Are
they being responsible with their medication? Have they presented to you in a way
that shows that they are in a good, stable place to take on this responsibility?
And not only in this moment, but do you foresee that they are on a course, that
they are being well cared for, that they are following their treatment plan, that
they are showing that this is something that they are prepared to do. So we are
going to go back and rely on the professional to give us their professional opinion
about how we should proceed. And what I appreciate about that is that we recognize
that you're a human being and we recognize that everybody has stuff that's going on
and that we don't want to be the ones that tell you that you can't parent because
you have a mental health condition. That's not our responsibility. Our responsibility
is to make sure that you are taking care of yourself and that you are taking steps
to be able to manage your own health and your own care as well as that of a
child. Yeah, that's a great point. And again, goes to that conversation.
This is not a process that you should be afraid of or feel as if it's going to,
you know, list out all of your vulnerabilities for the world to see it's really a
process to protect you and prepare you for the child that will be placed in your
home. When it comes to international adoption, many families worry because every
country has its own requirements for physical and mental health issues.
So, families that might be looking for specific information can go to our adoption
comparison charts on the Creating a Family website, creatingafamily .org. You go to
the adoption dropdown and then you click on adoption comparison charts. And we list
in that section the top 10 sending countries. We update them every year, the top 10
sending countries, and we list each factor that is important to know about parents
and how they can qualify, as well as the children that they'll be welcoming into
their home. Another great resource to help parents that are pursuing an international
adoption is the USCIS .gov website,
where they talk about the individual countries and the ratio of income that is
required. When you are looking at the physical and mental health issues of an
adoption home study, if you are not a family that sees a doctor regularly and you
don't maybe have a doctor of record, are you able to go to like an urgent care
clinic or a minute clinic and get an adoption physical? And does that satisfy the
requirements for most states? It does by the requirements of the states in which we
were. So we have said that that that's fine for people to go ahead and do that.
Okay, that's a quick easy answer for people if they are not connected to a regular
medical facility. So when we're talking about a domestic infant adoption home study
or an international adoption home study, I would imagine that some families might
have concerns about criminal background checks or misdemeanors on their rap sheet,
things that may have happened when they were young people. Can you talk a little
bit about what parents need to know about the criminal background part of an
adoption home study? So as we stated earlier, part of the process is having
background clearances. So you are going to have clearances from the state in which
you live. And if you've lived in a state other than that for us, it's within the
last five years, then you're going to have it from that state as well and any
states in which you live. So those are the overall general proof of whether or not
your background, your criminal history is clear. We have a verification form that we
ask people to sign as well that does talk about any criminal history. And we ask
for an explanation. We ask for an explanation. We ask for how things were
adjudicated. And we ask for what have you learned? How have you grown since then?
And we also look at what is your life like now? And how are you living your life
now? Again, much like with the mental health, we know that people are human and
that people have made mistakes in their past. And It doesn't mean that you can't
parent a child through adoption, but we do need to make sure that it wasn't last
week or last month and that you are not still living in that way and behaving in
that way. And if that is the case, then that's where it's going to be a red flag
for us and we're going to need to make some decisions that may not necessarily be
in your favor. But if it's been adjudicated, If it's been expunged or you know,
whatever has happened within the record, we need proof of it and we need to have a
conversation about What did you learn and how did you grow and that's part of who
you are and what's going to make you Hopefully a good parent to this adoptee and
hopefully have an understanding of what your child might go through as they're
learning and growing and exploring in their lives. Tracy, you and I both know with
being parents of adoptees, there's your stuff, there are issues and we have to be
able to have some compassion and tolerance and understanding. - Yeah, having that
grace from experiencing your own struggles and your own challenges and talking with
your adoption caseworker very honestly and openly and vulnerably about, Like you said,
what you learned and how you've grown and changed since then can also be great
launching points for then how to prepare yourself to talk to your child as they
experience challenges that may be different or similar, but that common ground of
we're all human, we all make mistakes, we all struggle through challenges. And I
love the idea that That's kind of the point of the home study is taking all of
the things that have brought you to where you are today To prepare you for where
you are going to go down the road with your child that you Welcome into your
family. Yes to be very frank. I wish many biological parents had to go through this
process Be funny that you say that because I know at the adoptive parents that have
to take this time to be so self -reflective and to really look deeply at what their
motivations and what their feelings are and how their experiences have shaped them,
it makes them better parents. And I know a lot of children who would have benefited
from their biological parents taking these measures as well. - Right, that thoughtful
introspective posture doesn't necessarily always happen for families that are,
you know, having children kind of the old -fashioned way. And yeah, I love that.
I am loving this interview, and I'm so thankful for Sheila's time today. I hate to
interrupt, but I want you to know about our Weekend Wisdom podcast. Every Saturday
morning, we publish a short form podcast about seven to eight minutes long, sometimes
10, and we talk about the very practical parts of raising adoptive foster or
relative children. We rely on your questions to do that, so if you have a question
about adoption, foster care, or kinship care, send your questions to us at info
@creatingafamily .org. We'll put them in the queue and spend some time researching and
digging through our archives to find the answer to the question that you send us.
Thanks so much and don't forget to tell a friend about Weekend Wisdom every Saturday
morning. Let's move into talking a little bit about the touchy topic of money.
The money is a real hard one for a lot of families and talking about their
financial snapshot where they are right now or where they've been can be sticky and
we'd love to hear, you know, your perspective about things like income and assets
and documentation they have to provide. And again, maybe some of that thoughtful
introspection as applied to the financial portion of the home study. - Adoption is
incredibly expensive, particularly domestic infant adoption. So there needs to be a
sign that you are going to be able to not only afford to parent this child,
which in today's world is a great expense, but also to be able to afford the
expenses of the adoption. So we have a great financial worksheet that our parents
have to submit along with, as I said earlier, they have to give us their credit
card statements, They have to give us their investments, their 401 (k )s, like we
need proof of all their finances, their checking account savings accounts, investment
properties, if they have possessions that are of value. So, we take a look at all
of that and we do a full assessment of what their assets are and what their
expenditures are. And ultimately, we want them to come up on the positive side of
that. That said, we're really looking at can you afford in the life that you're
living the expenses that come along with parenting a child and the expenses that
come along if your child has needs that go beyond the norm. Are you going to be
able to manage medical expenses if that is the case? Therapies, vacations because
that's something that's really necessary for your family to build connection, you
know, just the stuff that it's expensive to parent children. So we need to make
sure you have that. But we need to make sure that you're in a positive on a month
to month basis. I have one of my favorite families that rents an apartment.
They don't own their home. So they didn't have the benefit of the asset of owning
a home. And so they came out on the negative when we were doing a comparison
between their expenses and their income. We were able to justify that.
We were able to see that, yes, aside from having that asset, which would have
increased their financial value, they have the monthly income to be able to afford a
child. They were getting gifted money towards the adoption expenses, which they had
to detail and list, and they were grant money, also, which they had to detail in
the list. So you just need to be able to tell us where the money is coming from.
And you just need to be able to explain how you live your financial life. And
again, we give you the space to give us the explanation and to tell us what's
going on. And if it makes sense, then we can proceed. If it doesn't look like
you're in a good financial place or you've just lost your job and you're not sure
what your next move is going to be, then we may need to take some measures to see
what's going to happen before making approval. We are finding that there are many
grand opportunities out in the adoption community that will support not only people
who maybe are at a greater financial need, but also those that are very financially
sound and are also taking on this adoption opportunity. One such organization is
called helpusadopt .org. They are amazing. They have lots of money to give and they
really are not basing it on income. They're basing it on personal stories and they
give people an opportunity to apply multiple times. So you can, I believe they do
their disbursements quarterly and you can apply time and time and time again.
So I just wanted to put it out there because we found them to be an amazing
organization that is supporting all families that are looking to adopt. But there are
many, many others that will assist with those adoption expenses. - And creating a
family has some recent resources on grants and how to find grants.
We actually have a great guest article about grants breaking down financial barriers
for families that listeners might be interested in. So let's talk a little bit about
that personal history. You alluded to it at the beginning of the conversation and
we'll do a little bit more of a deep dive now. This part of the adoption home
study tends to be probably the most fraught for families. It feels very personal,
sometimes intrusive. But I'd love for you to talk about why we shouldn't be nervous
about this part of the home study, that personal history that includes all of our
autobiography, so to speak. And if you see any differences in domestic infant
adoption home study versus the international adoption home study for the personal
history part. I can't say that I see any differences, you know, we're still looking
at the individuals for who they are and we're using that space to share in the
home study Who these people are and how they got to be to this point So it
doesn't really seem to me that there's any differences between the two versions of
adoption that you're pursuing This is the place where you really just, as you said,
lay yourself bare. And each social worker is going to use that in the way that
that suits them. I tend to be an elaborate writer. My home study documents are
upwards of 15 or 16 pages, which sometimes I've been asked to cut them back a
little bit. But I also think about the opportunities that my children have had to
look at my and my husband's home study and see how we got to the point to
bringing them into our lives. So it really is something for me that is a part of
my child's adoption story. So I really, for my families, want to make sure that I'm
conveying as much as I can about who they are and what got them to this point. So
that said, we're looking at who you are, your personal profile,
an introduction of yourself, a description of actually we do put in there a physical
description of who you are, your height, your weight, your eye color, your hair
color, your age, your birthday. Then we start going into family composition, you
know, parents, step -parents, siblings, step -siblings, if there's other children that
you're parenting. We look at relationships between those people. I had someone
recently that has like two step -parents and then children,
you know, that are siblings with each of those step -parents. So we wanna know what
those connections are. What does your family look like? If you're alone on an island
and you have no family connections, that might be something that would be of concern
to us. What is that going to mean for your child? And how are you going to make
sure you build a community for your child if you've had not built one for yourself?
So that's something, especially when we have single adopters, we need to make sure
that they have a community that they have people around them that are going to be
there for them and their child as they go through life together. We look at what
was your childhood like, you know, from childhood adolescence, what hardships did you
encounter? What was school like for you? What activities were you involved in? What
were some highlights? What were some of the struggles that you went through? What
were some of the hardships? Maybe you had a loss of a parent or you moved around
a lot or there was substance abuse in your family. So we need to know about those
things. We need to hear about how they impacted you. If you are gay, we ask about
what was that like for you growing up? How was your coming out? We ask people to
discuss that. If you're in a partnership, how did you meet? What was your courtship
like? How did you decide to get married? What was your marriage like? What is your
marriage based on? What is the foundation for your relationship? What are your
values? What are things that you enjoy doing together? What are areas of stress in
your relationship? How do you both feel about making this decision to adopt who got
there first? How did the other get there? So we're really digging very, very deeply
into who you are as an individual and who you are as a couple if you're coming to
us in that way. Can I ask a question in the middle of that? Sure. When a couple
is coming to adoption, must they be married or can there be long -term partnerships
that are approved? Yes, you can have a long -term partnership approved. You do not
need to be married. Okay, And for international adoption, that differs per country,
and again, families can use the resource of the adoption comparison charts to
understand which countries accept single parents or married parents or couples in long
-term relationships. Thanks. You're welcome. I would imagine that's also true for
sexual identities as well, that the countries, the international countries are specific
about that as well. We ask about your lifestyle, what your hobbies and interests
are, how do you spend your time, what's your work life like, how do you balance
work life, relationship, hobbies, and interests. We ask about religion. It's not
important that you have or don't have. We just ask what you do practice and how
you incorporate that into your life and will incorporate it into your parenting. Then
we start to talk about parenting experiences, issues, attitudes, nurturing discipline.
You mentioned that earlier and really made you start to think about how you were
parented and maybe what you liked about how you were parented or what you'd like to
do differently. We also encourage in our home study sessions to think about what
will parenting look like for an adoptee and what might some issues be that maybe
Conventional parenting needs to be perceived differently when you're talking about
parenting adoptees. So that's kind of reflected on in that section as well. We ask
about what your plans are when you are placed with a child. So what are your
childcare plans going to be, how much time are you going to be able to be at home
once you're placed, and then who's going to be the caregiver for the child? So we
ask you to think about that. We understand that that's not set in stone, but we
want to know that you are thinking about your next steps as a parent. If you've
dealt with infertility and childness, we ask that you address that in this section
and give us some real feedback as to how you've processed that and moved on from
it. In our program, you can't actively be working infertility while you're working in
adoption. So we need to know that if you were pursuing a biological child and you
faced infertility, you've closed the door, you've grieved that, and you've moved on
now to this next big methodology for becoming a parent. And that's agency specific,
correct? That's for our agency. I guess some agencies may not have that particular
policy. And also maybe different for international - Correct.
- Depending on the agency or the country that you're working with. - Correct. Again,
we talk about adoption issues and motivations, making sure they really understand what
it means to parent and adoptee. And you're not just doing this as a second best or
as, you know, an alternative plan, like what really brought you here? Why did you
connect to adoption? What was it that made you take these extreme measures to
proceed in parenting in this way. We ask about views on expectant and birth parents
and openness and adoption. As I said, we are an open adoption agency and we really
need to make sure that our adoptive parents are understanding of what openness means
and have certain values that align with ours in regard to birth parents and their
choices in making an adoption plan. So there's detailed questions regarding that.
- And if you are working with an infant adoption agency that does not bring that
conversation up, prospective parents should absolutely feel free to be the ones to
bring it up. And hopefully in the process of choosing an agency, you will have
already asked, how do you feel about an open adoption? How do you help facilitate
open adoption? But again, along the way, if that does not come up in the home
study from the social workers side of the conversation, prospective parents should
absolutely feel free to bring that up and say, "Hey, can we get some education on
this? Can we talk about this? Can you help us kind of craft a plan?" And
certainly, crafting the plan in the home study process does not mean that you're
held to that when the actual adoption occurs, but it's good, like you said earlier,
to have a working plan, an idea or some preparatory information about what you want
it to look like so that you can move forward down the road with knowledge and from
a position of strength. Absolutely. And the flip side of that, Tracy, is if we
don't feel that you really have a full breath and understanding and commitment to
what we understand to be as open adoption, then we won't approve you to be in an
open adoption. We can approve you for adoption, but it may be either not open or
limited openness. So that, especially in our agency, is a big piece of the puzzle,
making sure that we feel confident that you can proceed in that way.
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Can you talk a little bit about families that already have children in the home and
how the children in the home are included in the home study process, obviously
depending upon their age and their understanding and how you handle kids that may
not be on board with their parents plan to adopt. - Sure, one piece of the process
is actually going out to the home. So there is actually a home inspection that is
part of the process. And at that home inspection is generally when we will meet all
members of the family or whomever is living within the home. And we need to speak
to each of the people living the home and to understand how they feel about all
the adoption process and bringing an adoptee into the home. So to your point, if
they are already parenting a child, that has to be discussed within the autobiography
and that child will have a full physical description and a profile description as
would the adoptive parents. So those children are also fully described within the
home study. When we have the meeting, we do sit down with them and talk to them
about how they feel about this process and what their connection to adoption is and
make sure that they are feeling confident that this is how they would like to
proceed as well. If there is any feeling that they are not in the same mindset
that their parents are, then that's a conversation that we have to have before we
can move forward with an approval. - Okay. When a family is putting together this
autobiographical essay or filling out the guide that their home study agent gives
them, is there a space for references, personal references, and how do you,
as a prospective parent, identify who would be the valuable references to share with
your agency? - Our agency asks for five references. We have a separate form that we
send out to the people that our prospective adoptive parents identify, and it is
kept confidential between them and us, so they submit it back to us. We ask that
at least three of them know both parties. So of the five,
at least three need to know both parties. And then If they don't have that, then
we need more so that we make sure that we have at least three that cover both of
them. It can't be a relative, it can't be your parents for our agency, other
agencies may have specific requirements, but it should be people that have seen you
with children that know how, you know, that know how you are. So maybe it's
relatives of yours that have, you know, nieces or nephews or cousins that you've had
some time that you spent with that you've babysat or gone on vacation with, if
you've worked in any capacity with children, if you're a Girl Scout leader or a Cub
Scout or a teacher, you know, somebody that has seen you engage with children so
that they can speak on that. But even if they haven't seen you with children,
they're going to speak on your character, on how they perceive you as a couple, how
they perceive you as prospective parents. So, it really needs to be people who know
you. It's not going to be somebody that you met, you know, last week or last
month. It's going to be somebody who has a real intimate knowledge of you and your
relationship. And a long -term relationship, I'm assuming, not somebody you just met
last year. No. I mean, if there is somebody that is in there, but they have a
really significant role in your life, then I wouldn't exclude them. Okay. But I
would like to see people that have known you longer return also. - Great. And you
touched a couple of minutes ago on the home inspection. We don't have to spend a
ton of time on it 'cause you have talked about the home inspection meeting often
includes the long interview process of the individuals living in the home. But what
are some of the physical things that you're looking for when you do a home
inspection part of a home study? - Sure, and it's funny because this is what people
really worry worry about as well. I hear all kinds of things. Well, we have some
architecture in our home that I'm coming out to the home. I need to make sure it's
clean, safe, and appropriate for a child. So I need to make sure that, and I don't
expect that you're going to have all of your child's safety locks and all of your
gates and all of that up, but I need to know that you're thinking about that and
we'll identify places that you're going to want to make sure that are secured for
when you bring a child into the home. We want to make sure that the walls are all
intact, that the carpeting is intact. We really just want to make sure that the
environment is appropriate for a child. I've heard stories, thankfully, I've not
experienced them where the home has needed attention and the social worker has had
to make recommendations for that attention to take place before they could approve
the home study. So that could possibly happen. But if you take those measures and
we come out and we re inspect, then then everything should be fine. But we also
want to make sure that you have your medications locked up that you if you have
firearms in the home that you have a safe and that they're put away, and that
everything is secure in the environment. Okay, how about pets? We love that you have
pets in your home, but they all need to have their vet records. That's part of
what you have to provide to us. They have to make sure they're all vaccinated. We
have to make sure that there's no issues with them. So yeah, we are checking on
your pets as well. I'll never forget our first home study. We timing had had gone
off the rails a little bit because one of our kids had an accident and so we were
in the middle of gutting our family room and when she walked in there was a huge
tarp covering the whole back half of the house because it was down to the studs
and we were trying to get it done and we had had to stop in the middle of the
process to take care of our son who had been in the hospital for a couple of
days. So our whole home study was done with this big dark brown tarp hanging over
the back half of the house. - That's funny. - Thankfully, she could see our vision
for what the room was going to become. And she knew when she came back for the
next visit, we had made significant progress and no tarp. - That's great, that's
great. I think the big picture in all of this is again coming back to we know
that you're human and we know that you're living your life and we know that things
happen in people's lives. And so we just need to understand? What are the measures
that you're taking to address them? How are you making sure that when you bring a
child into this home that they are going to be safe and secure? So that's the
bottom line. Right. It goes back to that question that we asked at the beginning.
Should I be nervous? No, you shouldn't be nervous. You should be open and vulnerable
and honest and assume that they're wanting you to succeed in this process because
they want you to build your family through adoption. All right, let's talk a little
bit about the education portion of an adoption home study,
specifically the parenting training that you most often will offer to families.
I'd love for you to talk about maybe the differences between domestic and
international home studies as it pertains two things like corporal punishment or some
of the other hot topics, maybe would be sleep training or anything like that that
parents would be needing some extra education on. Sure. So we have a set in our
full program. We have three to four courses that every family has to take.
One of them is on open adoption. One of them is on transracial adoption. One One
of this on intersectionality and then the fourth one which is an optional one is on
a non newborn placement So if you think that you would like to be placed with a
child who is over 12 months old Then in our program you're required to take that
course as well That's probably one of my favorite courses And I really encourage all
my families to take it because it really does get into nitty gritty about parenting
adoptees in particular Along with those we have to also have a prenatal substance
exposure course that all of our family's sake and then a basic child care course so
that when they walk out of the hospital with the infant that they know how to care
for an infant and we have a lovely online course that's like six hours that was
designed for specifically child caring for an adoptee so but if you didn't want to
do that you go to your hospital and and you could do any, you know, childcare
class that any pregnant person would be going through before they have a baby.
Beyond those, when we sit in our home study sessions before you actually sit down
to start putting your paperwork together, we do talk about issues related to
parenting. We do talk about discipline and how do you think you'll handle it if
there's attachment to one parent versus the other? And what are your feelings about
cell phones and what about overnight sleepovers that people's houses. So we do talk
about a lot of things that we really want to encourage and we brought it up in
the autobiography. How were you parented versus how do you think you would parent or
how are you wanting to parent and then how are you wanting to parent and adopt D
because that does add a different layer. So during those home study sessions is
really where we address a lot of those issues as well. If your agency does not do
that, there are so many resources out there that you should take advantage of. And
I always look at this period, including the waiting period, as a learning
opportunity. That's really your space where you're going to just delve into what do
I need to know to parent and adopt a. And there are so many resources, and I
always always use creating a family. All of my families know that my go -to
personally is an adoptive parent and that's where I send them for coursework and
podcasts and blogs. But there are so many resources. Our agency has on -demand
webinars that we offer. We have a YouTube series called AFTHTV where we talk to all
different members of the adoption triad and we use National Council for adoption for
a ton of webinars and learning opportunities also for our families. - Do you ever
find that you need to hone in on maybe a specific style or type of issue that
maybe a family is looking for or you have identified that they need additional help
and how does that get handled? Do they feel, do they feel comforted by that? Do
you feel like you get pushed back from that? Well, I think definitely the big thing
is open adoption. I think open adoption and translate racial adoption are the big
things that we really need to make sure that people have a clear understanding.
They're not going to know it at all. They're not going to understand at all. And
some of it you need to be in. But those would probably be the areas where we see
the most vulnerability and where we would ask people to take additional education on
those. I've not personally had any pushback from anybody that I asked about that and
they've appreciated the opportunity to explore those areas more. And if it comes back
that they have had all that education and still are not feeling like they comport
with what our beliefs are then again we may approve them for a different type of
adoption than what our agency offers. Okay and I think a lot of times in
international adoption agencies and home study agents often will hone in on child
specific requirements like the specific need of an identified child whether it's a
medical need or a cognitive need or a developmental need, I think sometimes when it
comes to child specific training, I think many countries have a kind of a group of
needs that are more commonly sent from their country to the US. And so home study
agents will often require an international adoption home study to include understanding
and learning and education about that group of specific needs, whether it's prenatal
exposure or limb differences or things like that. And those child specific
requirements are also something that you can learn more about at the adoption
comparison charts. - Yes, and that would be something that we would be heavily
reliant on the placing agency to share with us what those needs are and what those
requirements are. And then we would guide the family as to where they could get the
education support for that. - Great, thank you, that's very helpful. Is there anything
else that you wanna add before we kinda wrap it up to encourage families not to be
nervous about their home study? - Yes, I do just wanna say, I know that you took a
lot of time and care to get to this point. And if you can perceive the home study
as just a continuation of the time and care that you've put in and look at it as
a positive. It is going to be something that you are going to benefit from. I've
had so many families come back to me afterwards and feel so emotional when they
were reading through the finished document and really feel like it was such a
hallmark to how they've begun their parenting journey and really valued it.
So Yes, it is a cumbersome process and it is going to require a lot of you, but
like every cumbersome process that requires a lot out of you, there's so much value
to it. On the other side, I think you're really going to appreciate the work that
you put in and the resulting product that you're going to get out of it. The only
thing I would add to that is when it does feel cumbersome and it does feel
intrusive and it Like you've got, you know, 10 more documents that you have to
compile and get notarized. Just keep in mind your why. You are doing this for the
best interest of the child that you are dreaming of welcoming into your home and
holding that why up in front of you as you're going through the hard parts of
whether it be the home study process or any other part of the adoption process,
holding up your why will help you get over those obstacles more easily. Thank you,
Sheila, for your time. Thank you for your expertise. Thank you for keeping us on
track for all the different parts of a well crafted adoption home study,
whether it be domestic infant or international. The comparisons and the similarities
between them. It's been a great layout for us to understand what it is,
why we need it, and why we shouldn't be nervous about it. So thanks for your time.
Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.