Homestudy--just starting and already panicing

My experience having gone through a homestudy is that it's more of a general overview of your ability to provide a safe and loving home for a child. While they do examine a lot of different areas of your life (medical, financial, living quarters, etc), I don't recall there being an absolute black and white checklist. Our homestudy -- the actual home visit part of it -- was a brief tour of our home, and sitting and talking for a while. Nobody checked for safety locks or gates at the top of the stairs. They just wanted to make sure we weren't living in squalor. I doubt anyone would require you to fence your yard, especially if that's not in the spirit of the property or the neighborhood. There's no law that says you have to do that. And as for the finances, there's nothing that says you need to have 'X' in savings. They probably just want to see that you're financially responsible, not in bankruptcy, etc. Demonstrating that you're paying down debt is being financially responsible, IMHO. I think you'll do fine. Now, that was just our experience. There may be agencies or homestudy providers that ARE looking for certain things, and they may scrutinize things a bit more, you never know. But it's usually a collaborative effort, I mean they'll tell you (at least they should tell you) if they are concerned about certain things and what you need to do to meet their standards. I would think that they should give you a chance to correct it.

I know they require pools to be fenced in, but you can't really fence a lake. I don't think that would be a requirement, we don't even have a yard. As far as the savings, no one questioned our finances at all. We submitted a general budget of bills vs income, got employment verification, and documented our savings amount. No one questioned it or corralated(sp) it with our budget.

Definately do not worry about the finances. All we had to do was write out how much we made and how much we spent. No one even checked if we told the truth on how much we spent. The lake might be an issue and it is something worth asking about at the seminar. You obviously want to know early if you will only be able to adopt if you fence your yard. We got away with not fensing our pool for private adoption because the state law required fencing only if you were taking kids between 6 months and 5 years old. We told them we planned to fence the pool by the time he was 6 months old. Since his adoption was finalized when he was 6 months old, it then became none of their business ;) I know that would not have worked if we were going through the state.

For finances, like other posters said, it's income versus out-going. They didn't care about savings, just that we could manage day-to-day. You will need a gun cabinet, for sure. I can't see how they could really force the issue with a lake, kwim? Those are kinda big, bigger than a pool. :eyebrows: Perhaps putting locks up high on the door frame would suffice. Seriously do not sweat the home study. :) I cleaned like a fiend before every SW visit, and she never left the living room until the last visit. Then she only stepped foot into the nursery, everything else, she just poked her head in and left it at that. :arrow: We had several things that stressed me out about the home study, finances being one of them...but it really was no big deal. The hardest part about the HS was the wait to get it completed!

I am going to reiterate what everyone else has said, Don't sweat the home study. Our worker was here for a little over an hour. She sat in the Living Room with us, at the end she walked upstairs, peeked in the nursery and the bathrooms, checked for fire extinguisher and smoke/co2 detectors. And left! We do have a pool, (one of those inflatable ones) and we don't have a fence and she said it wasn't a big deal! So, ask at the meeting, but I don't think it will be an issue. For the finances, we had to prove we had the money to fund the adoption. But, all she did was ask. Like you, my family is going to help out with some of the funds, but all she did was nod and say good. Welcome to the board and welcome to the adoption roller coaster!

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Now I can put to my mind at ease....at least on this issue. Now, if only the ice that has had me stuck at home for 3 days will melt by Saturday so I can go to this seminar!

I think if you are doing a private infant domestic, you likely won't have to worry so much about these issues. They are more lax on the rules in my experience.If you plan to adopt through the state though, do be prepared for a closer look on things. For our homestudy, the sw did go through the house, but she didn't open closets and look under beds either! lol! However, she asked hard questions and those were important.Once our kids were placed and right before finalization, they did another home check and again verified we met the requirements for the fire extinguisher, co monitor, locks etc. Money was not an issue - we signed a legal document saying how much we made and that we fully understood our responsibility to support the child. They did require copies of our tax returns for the previous 3 years I believe so they did check into things.Even with all this, it still wasn't a big deal. I would rather they check things than not!:)

I live on a large pond and thought it might be an issue for the homestudy. I even brought it up to the caseworker. I have a baby gate outside on my deck steps to keep my dogs from running out there, and the caseworker felt that was enough to keep a baby/child from going to the pond. She didn't seem at all concerned. For what it's worth, I raised my now 15 yr old son on a pond and we always taught him to stay away from it without an adult (and we watched him too!).

Our adoption support worker explained to us that the purpose of the financials was to assure not only that we could pay our own bills, but to assure that any extra needs the adopted children had would be covered by adoption support payments, so as not to put a financial strain on us as a family. I don't recall us having to disclose anything about savings, only show a budget where our expenses are matching our monthly salaries.

Thats really a wonderful news.

It's important to bear in mind that the home study social worker isn't trying to make your life difficult - they just want to make sure your home is a reasonably safe place for a child. They WANT to help you adopt and aren't going to be actively looking for every little thing that they could ding you on. They're just looking for big concerns. You should feel comfortable asking him/her these questions before they even show up. Your social worker will appreciate that kind of transparency.