The Home Study | Reece's Rainbow

The first thing required to adopt a child from anywhere be it domestically or internationally is a home study. This entails filling out a bunch of paperwork that includes everything from the standard things like where we live and what we do for work, to really personal questions about our childhoods and family situations, and what we consider to be our own personal strengths and weaknesses when it comes to raising children and being parents. 

(I would just like to take a moment to impress upon all of you biological families out there how grateful you should be to not have to answer to anyone about why you will be a good parent. It's crap. There, that is the only pity party I will have!)

The great thing about The Home Study, is that it comes with a giant checklist. I. Love. Checklists! I rock at checklists. Copy of our Drivers Licenses, check! Copy of our bank statement, check! copy of our marriage certificate, check! Employment verification letters that have to be on company letterhead, state our annual income (even though I'm paid hourly), and notarized, Check! Check! Check! Check! Down the list we went. We had that thing done in no time. It actually took forever, but now that it's over it feels like we did it pretty quickly.

Next comes referrals from family and friends to get their opinion on why we will be good parents. I'm sure that was painful, awkward, and terrible for everyone who we asked to do one, so THANK YOU! You know who you are and we think you are amazing!

Next came the home visit. This was a really fun time where we took the morning off of work so that a social worker whom we had never met before could come to our house, sit in our living room, and ask us personal questions. For 3 hours. So glad that is done!

Just a note, I never want to be a social worker. That would be such a hard job! Who wants to go into strangers houses and try to evaluate if they are mentally stable enough to provide a safe, nurturing, home for a child? Not me! But kudos to her, because she was great.

Then our social worker had to type up a huge document stating her opinion of us using her visit and all of the forms and documents we submitted. This form is then sent to our international agency for approval and then translated into Vietnamese and used as one checklist item in our next task: the Dossier!