Home Study

ours said that too, however, we were allowed to read it there

It was the custom for many, many years never to let prospective adoptive parents read their homestudy reports. The reason was simple. The report is supposed to represent the social worker's best professional judgment about the family situation, consistent with applicable laws, and the social worker is expected to exercise that judgment without fear that the family will pressure him.her for changes, sue him/her in court, or threaten him/her with bodily harm. In some cases, some private and state adoption agencies and social workers now allow prospective adoptive parents to review their homestudy reports. Often, they include a disclaimer that the family may recommend changes only to correct errors of fact, such as a misspelled name, an incorrect address, the number of bio children currently in the home, or a parent's employer. In some cases, they also allow the family to request changes to correct grammatical errors and other non-substantive matters. Some may also allow the prospective adoptive parents to receive a copy of the homestudy after their adoption is completed, as mine did. There are some benefits to allowing prospective parents to see the homestudy report. Unfortunately, some social workers are overworked and rushed, and may not take enough time to write an accurate, thorough report; there may be errors of fact, some of them potentially damaging. As an example, if the homestudy report says that a family already has five children in the home, when the parents have only four children, a foreign country with a rule that only people with four or fewer children may adopt could deny the parents the right to adopt. Or if the homestudy report states that the husband was arrested for public intoxication ten years ago, and that is not true, it could affect an agency's willingness to place a child with the family. However, there are cases in which parents have requested substantive changes that the agency cannot accept -- for example, because state or federal law, or the laws of a foreign country, require certain topics to be addressed and even specify the necessary wording. As an example, when Russia was open for adoption, it refused to accept prospective parents with a history of alcohol abuse, even in the distant past. Some people wanted their homestudy report not to mention a couple of DUI arrests when one spouse was in his/her early 20s, because they felt that the spouse had been sober and free of arrests for more than ten years. At least one agency contacted the USCIS, asking if there could be two versions of the homestudy report -- one, for use by the USCIS, mentioning the arrests, and one, for use by the foreign country, omitting them. However, the USCIS ruled that the homestudy could not leave out this information, even if it would spoil their chances of adopting from Russia, As another example from international adoption, the USCIS wants social workers to state, "I asked the prospective parents whether either of them had been arrested or convicted of a crime, and they said no", rather than, "The prospective parents were never arrested or convicted of a crime," because if the prospective parents actually stated that they had no arrests or convictions, and it subsequently turned out that they had such arrests, they could be summarily denied the right to adopt internationally, and possibly even prosecuted.More importantly, there are cases in which parents want changes in wording to soften negative comments or even omit them. Agencies must respect the social worker's comments, as long as they are not based on bias or on factors that are unrelated to the prospective parents' eligibility to adopt. If the social worker feels that the prospective parents "are not on the same page" about adopting, or express negative feelings about the character of all birthmothers, and quotes specific comments that they have made, like, "I don't really want to adopt, but I am doing so to please my wife," or "I want a closed adoption because I don't want some wh**e telling me how to raise my child," then the social worker has a right to deny the couple the right to adopt, because both parents should want the adoption and should be able to speak respectfully of birthparents and understand that many love their children, even if they have made some negative life decisions or are too young and/or poor to raise a child. Whether or not a person is permitted to view the homestudy report if he/she believes that the social worker showed prejudice, he/she can go through an agency's process for disputing a negative homestudy finding, or even sue the agency. As an example, in a state that allows gay men and lesbians to foster or adopt, if a gay married couple is denied the right to adopt, even though they meet all of the requirements that heterosexuals must meet, they can make a claim of bias, unless the state or foreign country from which they want to adopt does not accept gay couples, or unless the homestudy agency has a written policy indicating that it does not do homestudies for gay men and lesbians, for religious reasons, but will encourage gay men and lesbians to seek out other agencies that may accept them. The agency will need to prove that bias was not involved if a claim is made, justifying a negative decision with actual statements, recorded in the homestudy by the social worker, or actual documents. As an example, the social worker cannot say that he/she denied the couple because they were holding hands and it disgusted him/her, given that it's perfectly normal for married straight and gay people to hold hands in public, but he/she could (and should) deny the couple if one of them had a felony conviction for tax fraud.All in all, unless a state declares otherwise, a homestudy agency does not have to allow a family to see its homestudy report, although some people have argued that a homestudy report is like a medical record, in that it must be considered the property of the person or couple for whom it was written. Personally, I did not see my homestudy report until I had completed my adoption and was home from China with my daughter. While I was a little nervous about that, everything I knew about the agency that handled both my homestudy and the placement of my daughter suggested that it employed good people, set high standards, and behaved ethically. In fact, my homestudy report was beautifully and sensitively written. The social worker was particularly good in the way she handled the fact that I was older than average -- I was 51 when Becca came home -- and single.One thing that I'd suggest, especially if you deal with an agency that does not allow you to view the homestudy report, is that you take very seriously any agency request that the prospective parents prepare an autobiography covering various topics. Write the document so that it is completely accurate and so that it presents any potentially "difficult" issues very sensitively. And give it to the social worker in a format, such as a Word file, that allows him/her to cut and paste sentences from it into her homestudy report. My homestudy worker actually extracted whole paragraphs from my autobiography, for use in the report, As my jobs have often required me to write carefully worded written documents, I had experience in choosing words well, and I was delighted that my social worker actually "borrowed" some of the language I used.And, of course, anyone contemplating adoption should select his/her homestudy and placement agencies with great care. The people involved in your homestudy and placement are going to be your partners in one of the most important actions you take in your life -- becoming the parent to a child -- and it is important to choose those partners with the greatest care.Sharon