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hey guys welcome back to my channel so I've done a few videos already about adoption domestic versus international adoption and in that video I mentioned one that I did a part two which was like a Q&A type thing in those videos I mentioned doing more adoption videos and you guys wanted to see that and so today we are gonna talk about a home study I think that people get really scared away from adoption sometimes even just from the idea of a home study in today's video we're just gonna talk about what it's like to do a home study for a domestic adoption so I've mentioned this before but International Adoption home studies look a little different and you have to compile you know your dossier and your whole set of paperwork that goes with that domestic adoptions look a little different again as we previously discussed international adoptions oftentimes depending on the country you follow The Hague Convention and so the rules of what that has to look like are different I will potentially do another video about that we have done both well we've done three different home studies but we've done it domestic we've done one international and we've done one international that was with a Hague accredited country so we've kind of done three different types of home studies but today what we're going to talk about is home studies for domestic adoptions so home studies are a vital part of the adoption process I think that sometimes as adoptive parents we get scared of these things but they're so important and honestly I think the more hoops that we jump through in the harder that we make it to adopt the better and protecting kids from people who have ill intentions so that's how I always try to look at it like instead of looking at it like why are they making me do all this this is ridiculous I look at it like this is vetting out the people who don't have good intentions and don't want to jump through these hoops so that's the kind of mindset I try to have when it comes to home study type stuff so for example here's this checklist type sheet that we got from our social worker and that's a social workers the one who will come out to your house they'll do your home visit usually it just depends on if you've ever had a home study done before and state your in it's very important to know that home study laws and rules and regulations vary from state to state we are in North Carolina so I'm going to share with you our experience here a lot of its gonna be the same but there might be small little differences and so for us what that looks like is is home visits usually if I recall correctly for our initial home study there were three home visits and then we have only ever since then done home study updates so when you do a home study update they usually only come back out once now people get really scared about what that's going to look like and first of all most of us go bananas cleaning our whole house from top to bottom baking fresh cookies making it a pot of coffee all this stuff and I'm not telling you not to make your home welcoming and inviting for your social worker but what I am Telling You is that social workers have seen all kinds of things from all across the spectrum they're there to evaluate whether you can take care of a child love a child and provide a child with a safe environment they don't care how you decorate your home they don't care if you um if your closets are perfectly organized things like that they're there to make sure that your home is a safe environment that you are safe people and all of that it's not quite as scary as you might imagine and they do look at your entire home they look from top to bottom we have a three-story home so she looked in every room but she was very kind and just you know it really wasn't scary like at all it didn't feel like overly invasive or anything like that so on that initial visit she came to look over our home they also do in-person interviews in our situation they did in-person interviews with us as a couple they interviewed us separately and then they interviewed our kids separately a lot of us who already have children might worry like what will my kids say cuz you know you just know that kids say the darndest things when you when you least expect it and I was really afraid that like one of my kids was just gonna say something completely off the wall are crazy and make us look crazy luckily that never really happened but you know of course they act silly and say silly things and I think again most social workers are used to dealing with children they're used to dealing with the fact that they know that kids get nervous and they act kind of funny or they say funny things or whatever so I wouldn't let that stress you out too much for us it's never been a problem we've had I can't even count how many home study visits and social workers we've had come to do home study visits both prior to adoption and then post placement visits after we adopted but here's some of the like paperwork criteria so you have to do medicals those medical forms will look different if you are doing a domestic adoption versus an international but for a domestic adoption the medical form like this is the medical form for our children so you have to do one for yourself in your spouse and then you also have to do them for your children it just asks for name age address height weight do they have any communicable diseases are they up to date on their immunizations do they have any ongoing medical concerns and then the doctor signature and address and phone number that's the very like basic it's all pretty much like a physical form like a very basic form for for kids I'm pulling up the adult medical form here so for the parents the medical form asks for height weight blood pressure pulse BMI history of illness or you just check the boxes for like tuberculosis seizures venereal disease mental emotional disturbances fainting dizzy spells heart trouble serious defects other diseases communicable diseases so obviously they just want to see if you are of healthy sound mind and body to parent a child and they ask for further explanation and again this is all stuff it's not just like if you check yes that means you're not going to get approved it doesn't work like that like you will talk with your social worker about any health concerns and a lot of times it won't prevent you from being able to adopt and then they just do a medical examination heart lungs abdomen and they ask if the patient and has the emotional and physical stability to parent a child do does the patient have a normal expectancy and then your doctor signs it that's it for a domestic infant adoption that's it there's not like or for a domestic adoption there's not a bunch of blood work or anything like that it's really just sort of a sign up from your doctor that says you are physically and emotionally healthy and can parent and raise a child so those are the medical forms and then you will have to do your police clearances so you do county state and federal and so for everyone in your household over the age of 18 we'll have to do this and it's a criminal background check and for us it's our North Carolina SBI so your State Bureau of Investigation check so you go to your court house you get fingerprints and then they run those and then we also had to do the federal background check so the FBI check and again very basic you go you get your fingerprints taken at a place where that's approved and then they mail it in and it's usually very very quick then the next thing you do is what's called a responsible individuals list and that is a child abuse background check so that's something again that goes through your state to make sure that you are cleared from any child abuse charges or anything like that then you also have to do reference letters usually that is from three people who know you but are not related to you so basically all they're asked to do is talk about how long they've known you the nature of your relationship with them they ask them to write about you know the stability in your family your maturity your character your lifestyle recreational activities things like that if you have any history of substance abuse you just get those three letters signed as reference letters again they could be people you go to church with people you work with and I've never had a problem anyone I've ever asked to write a reference letter for us has always been like yes we would love to so um I'm the kind of person that doesn't like to inconvenience people but most people don't mind helping you out especially for something like this for an adoption now the next thing is financial information so you give them copies of your most recent tax return and then you also write out monthly income and expenses and make a copy or make a list of your monthly budget and then you also send in a copy of your last two wage statements w2s or however it is that you get paid you send in that information that's just to really verify your income there's a lot of I think misconceptions about like how much money you have to make to adopt technically speaking and legally I believe you only have to make a certain a very small amount above the poverty line so no one's expecting you to be rich in order to adopt now I understand the cost to adopt is is there but as far as whether or not you can be approved to adopt you don't have to like make a hundred thousand dollars a year to be able to adopt again this is for domestic adoption of other countries have different rules like you know this much baseline and then ten thousand dollars for every person in your household that kind of thing but for domestic adoption it's just above the poverty line then you will do an autobiography section and this is the part where you tell your social worker all about you your story you know growing up why you want to adopt you know meeting your spouse and getting married having kids if you have them or perhaps if you've struggled with infertility and you know this is your chance to sort of tell your story and I've actually always found that part sort of fun to explain to a social worker like how we got here and why we want to adopt and all that kind of stuff so remember that while it can be intimidating I are on your side in the sense that like they care about kids - they want to see kids in families and so not that they're gonna let you slide on anything because they're not you still you got to check all the boxes you got to do all the things but they're not here to try to to try to convince you that you shouldn't adopt or to try to prove that you can't adopt or something like that their job is to merely make sure that all these things are met and sort of do this evaluation and help you through the adoption process so that's the very very basic information about a home study once you turn all that stuff in once you complete all of your home visits then usually it takes them anywhere from you know two weeks to six weeks to sometimes eight weeks to finish writing your home study and they right this big long like fat document it will have all of these clearances and approvals in it and then it will go through and write out sort of everything that you've shared with them in your autobiography and everything that they learned in the interviews when they sat down and spoke with you spoke with your spouse both with your kids they'll put all of that into this document as well and it's pretty much a requirement for all types of adoption that you have a home study done whether you're doing foster or domestic that it's a requirement that you have this done and I do think it's an important part of the adoption process even though it can be a little bit nerve-racking and scary once it's done it's nice that it's done it doesn't last forever I believe depending on the type of home study I think it's about 18 months that it's valid before you have to have it updated sometimes fingerprints expire approvals things like that so those have to be updated in your home study and then of course if you're ever starting a new adoption so like if we were gonna start another adoption we would have to do a home study update and add you know make sure that all of our kids that are in our house are on the home study everything's updated our financial information and then we would do the fingerprinting and all that all over again so even though we've already done it multiple times every time we update our home study we have to do the fingerprinting the background checks all of that stuff again so yeah hopefully that explains it um home studies depending on what state you're in and again what type of home study you're doing they usually run anywhere from like 1,400 to 3500 just depending on again if you're doing it domestic or an international with a Hague there's some there's some variances there but that's usually they usually fall somewhere in that range at least that's been our experience so hopefully that helps explain and demystify the home study a little bit and what it entails it all sounds and feels a little overwhelming initially when you look at these checklists and you're like okay I gotta do this and I got to do that but it really does it's pretty simple stuff it goes by pretty quickly and obviously it's completely worth what you get in the end for all of this so hopefully again like I said that helps demystify the study a little bit let me know if you guys have any questions down below in the comments and let me know if you want to see another video explaining more about an international home study and specifically maybe like a home study with a Hague accredited country that kind of thing so let me know and that's it for today's video guys I'll see you again in a few days bye [Music]