What does a homestudy update consist of?

bumping....anyone have any ideas?

Hi- We had 2 updates in the process one because we moved to another state... the other because we switched countries. It may be different depending on why you need an update but for both of mine it was nearly the same cost and nearly all of the paperwork over again. It was a major pain. We finished our homestudy and moved a few months later to another state. The new state required nearly everything new, fingerprints, background checks, ref letters, fire inspection of our house by a fireman, dr's letters and so on. Then around 7-8 months after our update the country we were adopting from closed adoptions. We were sooo shattered. I thought it would just be a quick call to the agency who did our update and they would add a few sentences and change the wording from country A to country B. I thought it would just be a few sentences to meet the new country requirements for example if Guatemala requires a statement stating who the guardian will be should something happen and so on. My homestudy agency made me re-do nearly everything again and nearly the full cost of a homestudy. We went back and forth and even had our placement agency call them. It was hard emotionally to have to re-do paperwork again and wait for the ref letters to come in, make a dr's appt and make sure the dr fills it out correctly, wait for background and fingerprints to be processed and so on. I understand the first update having to do all the paperwork again since each state requires different things, but the second update to switch countries I feel was not necessary to re-do everything. Nothing expired and we did not move, the house, income and everything was the same. We just needed it adapted to the new country. I compared the 2 homestudies afterwards and we are talking just a matter of 3-4 sentences to meet Guatemala. And we had to do Almost all paperwork over again. I hope your update is not as complicated. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer but that is what we had to do. So nearly 3 homestudies and paperwork and cost X3 for 1 adoption.:hissy: edited to add they did do another home visit, very very informal. And once the update is sent to the INS we did not have to do anything with homestudy 1 or update 2. Update 3 was sent to INS and that was it. We did not have to take a copy of all other homestudies and updates with us. It may vary with who you see. I would see what other people on here have to say as well. Hang in there- Shelly :)

nothing had changed, but the sw had to come to our home and talk with us. She was a different sw than did our original study, but she had the original and said that it was really quick to change things. The only thing different in the study was that we had already visited Zoe. No, we did not have to send the updated study to anyone except USCIS. Good luck, Dina

Our HS is due to expire in Sept. 2007. So, our agency had us re-do the child abuse form (just sign it), get new dr. letters, and reference letters-neither of which had to be notorized. Hope this helps.

We used a different agency for our HS update. We only had to visit with the SW once. The only document that transferred was our fire inspection. We had to redo everything else. However, we didn't have to do the training again. The SW who did our HS update also did our post placement for our readoption. I found the HS update a walk in the park compared to the first homestudy. Good luck!

We had our HS updated twice. The first time was right after our HS was submitted to INS. INS had some questions, and wanted some clarifications... It was just another page, an addendum, that our sw completed. The second time, we had to update our HS because we accepted a referral for a child that was older than that mentioned in our original HS. Again, another page was added on to our original HS, but we had to go through the whole Notarization-State Certification-Guatamalan Consulate certification, then FedEx the new page out to our agency. Good luck. Hope you didn't change states, perhaps it won't be too bad.

In my opinion, most agencies prefer to do complete re-do's of the homestudy instead of just an update. Why?? Because an update cost a few hundred dollars and a complete re-do cost a couple of thousand. Just my opinion, but unless an update is caused by a really minor thing, most will insist on a new homestudy. It's just a way to make money in my opinion!!

We did an update just for moving. Very simple and very quick. Different LSW in a different state. PGN requested it sooner than we thought we would need it because our move date was mentioned in our original homestudy. Tara

Our actually WAS a "complete new homestudy" officially, not an update, because they determined it would be better for INS if a completely new one was sent. We did also have to do a new child abuse clearance with fingerprints. The questions she asked involved mostly financial... what are your expenses each month (electric, food, entertainment, mortgage, stuff like that) and what are your plans for childcare. Everything else she just took from the old homestudy (how we will discipline, etc.). She just charged us for an update though, not a completely new homestudy, and I am pretty sure she didn't call our references again -- I think they would have mentioned it. D.