We have been asked many questions on the process of adopting from Ethiopia. While this blog entry won't go into detail on why we chose this particular agency and country, it will give you an idea of the process we are going through. We are using an agency out of St. Paul to do our actual placement adoption, the agency is Children's Home Society and Family Services ( www.chsfs.org). We are using a local agency, Catholic Charities, to do our home study which is a requirement to be completed in our home state.
Here are the steps and requirements for Catholic Charities:
- Application
- Personality test – we have to take this individually and then also take it a second time scoring each other
- Parenting test – to gauge our ideals and parenting ideas.
- 10+ hours of classroom training
- An autobiography that was completed by each of us. This document was very detailed and took a long time to complete. It dealt with questions about what you feel about your parents, to your childhood, thoughts on parenting to our current lives. It required us to document how we felt about ourselves, our families, our relationship with each other and our expectations and feeling towards the future, including that of our own family.
- State and Federal background checks on both of us
- 5 references
- Three 3-hour consultations with a social worker
- Medical background check and physical
- Financial review
- All of the above is used to create a written home study report that is then passed onto Children's Home and immigration
Here are the steps and requirements for CHSFS:
- Application
- Trans-cultural Parenting plan worksheet
- Cultural worksheet
- CIS & immigration paperwork
- Fingerprints
- Local background check
- Certified birth certificates and marriage certificate
- 2 references (separate from above although they could be the same reference person)
- Medical background check (in addition to above)
- Cover letter to the country as part of our application
- Power of attorney paperwork
- Plus I am sure that there will be additional requirements pop up as we move forward.
Almost everything above has to have a notary signature as well! Looks like a lot but for the most part it is a lot of busy work. We are excited as we can see the end of the road and hope to have it all completed by the end of the year.
David
