For our first adoption, we had to complete a full home study. A home study is an incredibly detailed document created by a social worker in which she says whether or not she thinks you’re a fit family to adopt a child. Part of the home study has to do with whether or not you keep dangerous items away from the children, if the home has enough bedrooms, etc., but the larger part has more to do with the people adopting than with the physical house they live in.
To complete the home study, you have to get various police clearances, medical reports by any doctors you’ve been seeing, write a 5 to 6 page autobiography outlining who you are and how you’ll parent your children, sign a bunch of forms agreeing to various things, submit financial information showing that you can actually support the child you want to adopt, send in birth and marriage certificates, etc. It’s a lot of work, both for the parents and the social worker. (It also costs a lot of money… think between $1400 and $2000 depending on what agency does it.)
Well, if you adopt a second time (at least if it’s within a certain period of time after the first adoption), you only need a home study update. Yay! That sounds like it’ll be so much easier!
I got the documents by email yesterday. For the update, we’ll need to get various police clearances, medical reports by any doctors we’ve been seeing, sign a bunch of forms agreeing to various things, submit financial information showing that we can actually support the child we want to adopt, etc. Oh, and the social worker will have to check out the house to say we keep dangerous items away from the children and we have enough space. So, basically, we don’t need to send in the birth and marriage certificates, and we don’t need to rewrite our autobiographies (which really wouldn’t have been too bad since we have them saved on the computer from last time). *sigh* Well, I should have expected it, I guess. I knew we’d have to get new clearances, because they’re only good for a little while. And I knew they’d want new medicals since they’re only good for a year. I had forgotten all of the other things that were needed, though. Many of them were also needed in some form for the dossier (the huge packet that’s sent to the adoption agency), and since we finished our last dossier more recently than our last home study I had a more clear idea of what was needed there. Apparently, a few of the state laws have changed, too, so there’ll be a little bit that’s different this time. Oh well. I’ll get it all done as I can! Oh, and at least this one costs less than the first one. It’s $900. 😛
On a completely separate note, Eli finally cut his fifth tooth today! Er… maybe last night. Anyway, he now has another tooth poking through his upper gum. It’s in a rather odd place in that it’s about half-way back towards the molars (or maybe a little more), but I won’t complain. More teeth means he’ll be able to chew better! I wonder when the other front ones will come in. Other than that one he only has the two on top and the two on bottom right in the front, not any on either side of them. Completely different pattern from the one my girls followed when cutting teeth. Well, he’s cute, anyway. 🙂