Things You Need For A Homestudy...

Thought I would give you all an idea of what all goes into getting a homestudy done. & no, ours is not finished yet! We've gotten a second draft from our social worker, but I have to say it didn't look any different from the first. She still had wrong names in the homestudy, misspellings, etc. Overall though we thought the homestudy was good. Our social worker is just very bad with details (self admitted) and it's getting frustrating when details can really make a big difference. Oh well, what can we do?

So anyway.... here is a list of things we've done for the homestudy

1. Complete an application
2. Sign Contract
3. Send Money
4. Fill out a family profile questionnaire
5. sign the statement of fees form
6. sign form saying you understand and will have post placement visits
7. Fill our a reference letter form - needed four references
8. Sign an authorization to obtain info form
9. Sign the corporal punishment policy (basically saying we won't spank our kid)
10. Decide on a guardian for our children, and sign the form
11. Have our guardians sign a form
12. Copies of the last 3 years of our Federal Income Tax Fillings
13. Send in forms for a criminal History/sex offender check to the State of Virginia
14. Send in a form for a child abuse & neglect information system records check to the State of Virginia (had to be notarized)
15. Sworn Statement or Affirmation
16. DMV record checks for both Jesse & myself
17. Supplemental questionnaire
18. Medical forms for each person residing in the home
19. Copies of Birth Certificate for everyone. (has to come from vital statistics)
20. Copy of Marriage Certificate
21. Letter from employer verifying annual salary
22. Statement of Acknowledgement that we don't expect our child to be perfect.
23. Financial & Net Worth statement
24. Adoption Costs Calculations Sheet
25. Read and sign document that we have read parent preparational booklet
26. Notification of Child Placing Agency
27. Copy of a fire escape plan for our home
28. type of child requested form
29. family photo & photo of outside of home
30. a 6 page autobiography - one for Jesse & one for me


I'm so glad the Dossier that goes over to Ethiopia is not that intense! I'll write later about what all goes in there. : )

Our social worker told us on Monday that she is leaving on vacation next wednesday, and so if we want a finalized homestudy she said that our agency and ourselves need to get her any revisions by this Wednesday (tomorrow). So we need prayer. I really want to get our dossier to our agency so we can continue to move along in the process. Right now we have everything ready, we are just waiting for our finalized homestudy. Please pray that our agency can turn the revisions around fast and get them to her soon. And also pray that our social worker will be very diligent in doing a good detailed job on our homestudy. Thanks!