Home Study Agency

This ball is rolling and we are excited!! Since we chose an out of state agency to complete our adoption through (Lifeline = Alabama), we needed to find an agency in Texas that is Hague Acredited to do our home study for us. I did some research and found that there is only one in the Houston area and it is called International Family Services. I was a little unsure of just choosing an agency without a recommendation, though, so I asked some friends from church who recently adopted who they used for their home study. They completed an independent adoption from Ghana, so their agency didn't have to be a Hague agency, but she told me they also used IFS! I was very excited to hear about their experience and to hear that they didn't have any trouble with them.

Yesterday I called IFS and asked them about having a contract home study done. This is what it is called when you are not using an agency as your placing agency, but only for the home study portion of the adoption. The lady I spoke with, Kim, was very nice and helpful and had all the information I needed. She sent me an email right away with the autobiography we each have to complete and mailed me a packet of information with applications and lists of all the other documents we need to begin collecting.

So here's what this process will look like: We can begin working on the autobiographies and gathering all the documents now. She said it usually takes people 3-4 weeks to do this, but that if we really work we can probably get it all completed in 2 weeks. Once we submit all our paperwork to them, they will assign us a caseworker and begin scheduling our home visits and interviews. I believe there will be 4-5 of these. Kim said that from the time they get our paperwork, it will take them 4-6 weeks to complete all the visits and write the report. So all total we are looking at the home study taking roughly 6-8 weeks, depending on how fast we can do our part!

I began working on my autobiography last night. The form is the same for each of us, but we have to fill it out individually. The word Kim used to describe it was "nasty" and she was right - it is 17 pages long, with just questions one right after the other on each page. I have started filling it in, probably spent about 3-4 hours total on it so far, and I am only about halfway finished! If you can think of a question to ask us about anything in our lives, it is on there. It's crazy detailed.

We had our orientation interview today with our caseworker from Lifeline, Logan. Randy and I both enjoyed talking with her and getting to share our hearts for adoption and what has led us to this point. She asked us questions and then she shared the timeline in a more detailed way with us. We were able to ask her some questions and we ended up being on the phone with her for about an hour. She clarified a little for us on how this partnership with our home study agency works and what we need to do with Lifeline while we are working with IFS. She is really great and we are thankful to have such a helpful, encouraging person walking us through each step of the process!

So that's where we are now! Time to start hunting down all the documents we need to submit and making copies of paperwork we already have here at home. And filling out the autobiographies. Yikes! Lots of work but we are excited to have work to do towards our ultimate goal!