Home Study

Our home study to be approved for an adoption needlessly increased my anxiety. I cleaned the house like a nesting pregnant woman and fretted over every detail of my written biography. In reality, the process was painless. The hardest part was scheduling doctors appointments and finding a place to park at the police headquarters where I had to request a copy of my criminal history. Thankfully I have none.

After having been approved for a domestic adoption the agency told us it could be up to a two year wait, but if we took additional classes, we could earn our foster care license. There were several benefits to becoming a foster parent. Most importantly, if a child is adopted by their foster parents, and not having to adjust to a new set of adoptive parents, the child will experience one less loss in a life already filled with pain.

Biological parents get the genetic lottery. We got a 10 page questionnaire detailing race, age, religion, impairments, disabilities, and medical conditions of our child. We checked "Yes" for missing digits, and "No" for terminal illness. Boy or girl, any race, aged newborn to five years. It felt ungodly to choose the makeup of our child.

After attending the necessary foster care classes, we had to complete a second home study with several visits from a licensing social worker who measures the child's room for adequate square footage, counted our smoke detectors, checked to see if we had a carbon monoxide detector, and confirmed our medications were kept in a locked box. On the night of our last home study, the social worker arrived with a frightening question "has anyone from the agency called you"? My neck hair stood up. Something was about to happen.

The agency had a little boy they needed to place in a home in the next few days. The current foster home wasn't working out and they needed to place him with a family that would be willing to adopt him. We weren't licensed yet, so our application was going to be overnighted to the State with a request for an emergency license in 24 hours.