What's all this paperwork about?

In any adoption, there is paperwork. The quantity and timelines to complete varies between international, domestic parental placement and waiting child/US foster care. My experience is in domestic parental placement, and I've found most of these are done within 3 months - the biggest 'lags' being in completing background checks. Whichever your path, be sure you have NOW mulitple copies with seal of your birth certificates, marriage license, any divorce decrees. These too can take some time to obtain and having multiple copies provides a safety net for multiple requests (it happens). As far as agencies, there's a thread here somewhere on the boards that posts agency feedback. My best advice though is to contact your state licensing board for a list of agencies and any complaints, ask your OB/GYN, religious leaders and friends for recommendations. Best of luck. Regina

There is lots of paperwork but it varies depending on the route you take and how diligently you work at it. We had 4 pages of autobiography to complete for our private agency and 34 pages of questions when we started with Children's Services. Background checks take a bit of time. You can work ahead by making sure you have copies of birth certificates, marriage/divorce decrees, etc. Paperwork for international seems to take longer as you have to send it off to other places for approval etc. Hth...

day and night for 6 months?! no way!we applied to our homestudy agency in late october/early november, had our first visit before thanksgiving, our second visit before christmas, and just had our third visit; it would have gone faster except for the holidays. i am in school and working. my husband works full time. and we are renovating our house. but our homestudy is now done and i have almost all our dossier paperwork as well. yeah, there was paper to get, but it just wasn't that bad. i do have a high tolerance for paperwork, but i thought this was easier than itemizing deductions on taxes. i think the hard part for my husband was the autobiography, but he did one section every night or every other night, and he probably never spent more than 30-45 minutes at a time, and he was done in a few weeks (going very slowly).

For us to do OUR paperwork it took one week!!! We had an autobiography that we had to write, Form with all of our addresses from the last 15 years or so and some forms we had to sign saying we would allow a fire inspection, fingerprints, sheriff check etc.... We handed in our paperwork in a week. NOW... That being said. We had to have a physical done so we had to make appointments for that and turn in the form when it was completed. We had to have 4 references so we had to wait until the Worker sent out the forms for them to fill out. We had to wait for fingerprints, clearance and sheriff reports to come back. We started our home study the 3 rd week in September and everything was ok'd and back to her department in November. Throughout this time she made three visits to our house. We were done and certified on Dec 9th. That includes all the time it took for her to do her part etc.... Our paperwork was the quick part!!!! Like I said.... One week!!!! Of course we were the first ones to have it handed in from our class since We wanted to get it done .

For us to adopt, there are two completely different sets of paper work that must be filled out one for state and other for county. So basically we have to be approved by two different child care agencys. So that means two different workers must come for home visit...etc.I think the stuff that has taken the most time is the 33 hour child care classes my huspand and I must take. We also had to take universal CPR and First Aid.We had to get two different live scan finger print checks one for county and the other for state which were at two different facilities across town from each other. THAN there was a FBI and State Background check that we sent off in mid November and WE JUST got our clearance LAST WEEK. So bottom line our home study is going to take 6 months, and thats going full speed us getting our info in before anyone else in our adoption orientation group NOW we just sit back and take the 33 hour class beginning next week jan 26.Our home is all ready ( just gettin pretty annoyed w/ those magnetic tot lock instillations:grr: ) we have our crib, swing, bouncer chair..etc all set up for the home visit. We still have the "official" private and joint interviews but our SW said there would be no problem with those when we met with her in our joint screening interview. (where they weed out people who they see a problem in adopting)After April 06 (license issued) it will take about 6 monthsto have our baby girl "Katie" in our arms.:cheer: sus

I found that I took care of my paperwork rather quickly, but dh kinda dragged his feet. not because he didn't want to adopt, but he had tremendous difficulty with the personal essay (he's an engineer and not a writer, lol). the anxiety of writing an essay about himself, plus the pressure he put on himself by analyzing his life up to that date led to major anxiety. I had to talk him down from the ledge :p . I had to point out to him that it didn't have to be perfect, it was just an essay and that he'd do just fine. then he knocked out a good one in no time. I hear from our agency and facilitators that guys often have trouble with their essays and personal profiles. it should only take maybe 4 months tops to finish the paperwork and the homestudy (this working on it a few times a week). some of the stuff, like the fbi fingerprint thing take a while to do and are out of your hands. get that done asap. depending on your doctor and health plan, it may take a month or so to get a doc appt. so there are a few things that can slow you down :) . good luck! Lisa