Ah, the oh-so-dreaded home study. Prior to actively pursuing adoption, I had
heard several negative things about a home study, and so had a decent amount of
anxiety about completing it. The home
study is a catch-all term used to refer to your home assessment (checking to
make sure you meet the basic safety needs), interviews by your case worker, as
well as interviews completed by a third party.
The home safety assessment is pretty straightforward and is
the first basic hurdle to adoption. For
the most part, they want to make sure that you have a fire extinguisher and
smoke detectors, locks on all cleaning products and medications, and all of the
outlets covered. If you have a pool or a
trampoline things get a little more complicated regarding safety
essentials. This part is taken care of generally
prior to moving forward with the interviews.
The caseworker interviews consist of surface level questions
done in the home. Basically, the
caseworkers want to get a feel for what life is like in your home. They may ask questions like, “What does your
family do for fun?” or, “What is your support network like?” or, “Do you own
any weapons and where are they stored?”.
You don’t need to stress about this too much, though. Just be yourself, try to relax, and know that
your caseworker is generally happy that you want to adopt one of the children
from CPS. Caseworkers do not want kids
to stay under the care of the state indefinitely, but rather want to find them
the ideal forever home. Their goal is
not to dismiss you, but to help you to find kids that will be the best fit for
your family. I know it is hard to
believe that in the moment, but trust me – caseworkers are thrilled when a
child receives a permanent placement.
The final step is a little more involved and consists of an
interview and inspection from a third party company. Ours was scheduled in the afternoon on a day
prior to me working that evening. I
naively assumed that it would take less than an hour, and it ended up taking
2-3 hours. Thankfully, a coworker stayed
late so that we could complete our interview without interruption. A woman showed up at our house with her
laptop for the assessment. She spoke to
us first together, then each of us individually, and then together again at the
end. She wrote down everything that we
said for her report.
The questions were much deeper and difficult to answer than
those asked by our caseworker. We were
asked questions like:
· What is your biggest concern regarding adoption?
· How would you handle discipline with your children?
· How do you handle stress?
· How did your parents discipline you as a child?
· What was the environment of your household like when you were growing up and how did that affect you?
· How do you handle arguments with your mate?
These
questions made us search deeper than we had initially planned. This was an incredibly important step for the
two of us as we began to truly count the cost of moving forward with adoption. The questions forced us to have
conversations that we did not even realize were necessary. In the same way that premarital counseling
allows couples to remove the rose-colored glasses, this home study made us
truly examine our hearts and see some areas that still needed work.
A
Christian pastor once said, “When we are bumped, we spill what we are filled
with.” If the hurt of our childhood or
our concerns about our mate are not dealt with early on, these will inevitably
“spill” over onto our kids. No amount of
planning and preparation will ever make you a perfect adoptive parent, but
dealing with the dark areas of our past will allow more of the love of Christ
to shine through us to our children.
