Wrapping Up the Homestudy

On Monday I will have my second and final homestudy meeting with my social worker. During this meeting, she will continue to collect information from and about me, as well as talk to me about being an adoptive parent. Part of the social worker's job in a home study is to help educate the prospective parent as to some of the challenges that await once the child has made it home. Parenting an adoptive child is very different than parenting a biological one. The older the child is when adopted, the more different the parenting style is.

This week I have been furiously collecting references from friends and my mom (in NH you have to have one relative's reference), filling in financial summaries and today I completed my medical exam. No I am aiting for to more references and my end of the omestudy will be complete... in record time! What happens next is that my social worker takes all of the information she has compiled and will write a summary/report which she will then submit to my local agency. Once they approve the homestudy, I will send it to my adoption agency in Texas who will read through the draft to be sure that the wording is appropriate for its later scrutiny by the Kazakhstani government. Once they approve, the NH agency will issue the final homestudy.

This should all happen within the next 3-4 weeks. When that has happened, I will begin to create my dossier, which is the complete collection of documents that I will have to provide to the Kazakhstani government for them to approve me as an adoptive parent. The dossier will first be examined with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that everything is perfect for submission. Then it will be translated page by page by an Embassy approved translator, who my agency arranges. Once the dossier is submitted... you just wait... and wait... and wait... It will also be at this point that I will secure my blog with a password. Once it is submitted, I will be under a microscope and no matter ho good one's intentions are, one can never be too careful in protecting one's own personal thoughts and experiences. I invite all of my friends and family to continue to read this blog once it is password protected. I am not protecting it from you... I am writing it for you!