Dossier finalized - another step closer!

Great news in that Theresa and I were able to give ourselves an early Christmas gift by completing all of our paperwork for our dossier and dropped it off at UPS for delivery at CHSFS on Tuesday morning. What does this mean you might ask, well the only thing between us and officially waiting  for our child is for our agency to review the paperwork and ensure that everything is in order. We hope to be waiting before the New Year!

 

We must admit, this was a very big step and we are so excited to be closer to adding to our family. At this point it is very real and we are still holding out hope that we will get our referral this Spring.

 

There was some new news regarding traveling to pick up our child after receiving our referral. CHSFS has extended this time to 12 weeks from the original 4-8 weeks. I must admit that this is very disheartening as the thought of waiting three months once you have seen pictures and commited to your child will be very tough. I guess the change is being done for two reasons, the first is that this allows the time for the Ethiopian courts to process all the paperwork to make the adoption final in country, and the second is all about expectations. It is much better for CHSFS to come to a family at 6-8 weeks and tell you that you are free to travel, vs. the other direction where you have all your arrangements set and then it is postponed.

 

Well, I suppose - i should be running.

 

David

Home Study Approval!

We received great news this afternoon. CHSFS called to let us know that our home study was approved and we could move forward to the next step of completing our dossier. Our award you ask, completing another pile of paperwork including getting an additional ten documents notarized. We have to send a number of these documents to Bismarck to be certified by the Secretary of State. Once we have those back as well as the certified home study (same process) then we can forward our entire dossier to CHSFS for final approval. If everything goes as planned, we will be officially waiting for our child before the New Year! How exciting!!!

 

Anyone have any big plans for the weekend? We will be cleaning and preparing for Theresa's family which we will be hosting for Christmas. Should be a great time.

Cheers,

David

Draft of Home Study Complete

We just found out that the draft of our home study is completed and a copy has been sent to us and CHSFS. Wierd how agonizing and stressfull it is waiting to read what someone's perceptions are of you. I will let you know our thoughts on the report hopefully tonight.

 

Just adding a quick comment - the home study outside of small issues looks great! We plan to turn it in today and then wait for any changes from CHSFS before finalizing. We are still waiting for our criminal background to come in, hopefully that will be come back by the time we complete our doctor's physicals on the 15th - then we are done!

David

Final Home Study Meeting

Well, we had our final home study visit with our social worker this morning. This time it was in our home. It went very well and we are looking forward to reviewing the draft of the home study report by the end of the week. While at times some of the questions throughout the process were uncomfortable, and sometimes we felt it wasn't fair to have to go through the process, there was a lot of good to come from these meetings. We feel about as prepared as we can be at this point of the process and understand that we always will have areas where we can improve ourselves.

Once we finalize the home study it will be passed along to CHSFS and immigration. We still need to complete our medical exams and our background check still hasn't come in. We hope to all of this completed in the next 2-3 weeks and have the dossier completed and accepted by Christmas – that will be our Christmas present to each other.

David

The Process to Adopt Internationally

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

 

Another Home-study Visit

Wow – this morning we had our second meeting with our social worker, let's just say it wasn't as easy as our first meeting. It is always difficult to be analyzed by another – but in the end I think it is important to use these meetings to look at how Theresa and I can improve our lives and better understand each other.

The good news is that we are one-step closer to finalizing our home study. We have our last meeting next Monday morning, and hopefully will have the first draft completed by the end of next week.   I would really like to have our home-study complete, dossier finalized and be officially waiting for our child(ren) by Christmas – that will be our Christmas gift to ourselves.

 

David

Home Study

Well we completed another step in our journey to adopting. We had our first home study meeting this afternoon. We were both very anxious and didn't know what to expect. It was refreshing to learn it wasn't going to be as difficult as we had imagined.

We have a busy couple of weeks, finishing up our home study meetings by the end of the month, along with getting Theresa's passport, getting medical physicals, immunizations, and completing the mounds of paperwork.

 

I will chat more later.

 

David