Home Study while Abroad

April 4, 2016

If you will be returning to the U.S. within the next 1-2 years, you may wait until you return to start your adoption process. One important reason is that your homestudy will need to be valid for the place to which you are bringing your child, whether in the U.S. or in some foreign country, when you appear at the U.S. Embassy in the child's country, to obtain his/her visa. Given that most adoptions, nowadays, take at least 18 months to two years, you could find yourself having to spend anywhere from under $1,000 (rare) to well over $5,000 for a brand new homestudy, if you change your country of residence during the adoption process. While you can have a cheaper homestudy update done, if you are moving from house to house within the same state or foreign province, a state to state or country to country move is a much bigger deal.

That being said, if you want to get started now, finding a homestudy provider is no big deal, in most cases. Your U.S. placement agency will often be able to refer you to a social worker who is authorized to do homestudies for Americans living overseas. If your agency doesn't know of someone able to do homestudies where you are living, the U.S. Embassy in that country will sometimes have a list of people qualified to do them for Americans. You can also find agencies, online, that regularly work with Americans living abroad and can recommend homestudy providers. Or you can contact International Social Services, which can do homestudies for Americans in many countries overseas that are not party to the Hague Convention on international adoption.

Remember, of course, that a homestudy is about a lot more than your home. A homestudy is designed to determine whether you are eligible to adopt a child in need of a permanent loving family, and to prepare you for the particular challenges of parenting an adopted child. Although having a homestudy may seem intrusive and a royal pain in the neck, it really can be helpful in dealing with some of the challenges you will face. As a result, a good homestudy provider can really help you think about preparing for and raising your adopted child. Moreover, choosing a good homestudy provider is important because, if he/she is unfamiliar with USCIS requirements, your I-600 A application can be rejected or held up for weeks while the USCIS asks the social worker for additional information or clarifications.

If you use a reputable agency that is licensed in the U.S. and Hague-accredited, you won't need an attorney for your adoption. The Universal Accreditation Act of 2012 requires all Americans adopting internationally, and not just those adopting from Hague countries, to have a Hague-accredited agency or a Hague-approved lawyer in the U.S. as their primary provider. The purpose of the law is to ensure that all adoptions by Americans, including both Hague- and non-Hague adoptions, safeguard the rights of children, their birthparents, and their adoptive parents. While you are still welcome to adopt from a non-Hague country, or to do many steps of the adoption process, such as identifying a child, on your own if your state and the foreign country allow it, you will need to have a Hague-accredited agency or a Hague-approved attorney who can serve as a primary provider and ensure that what you are doing complies with all legal and ethical requirements. You will not be able to get an adoption visa for your child if you do not comply with this new law, which took effect in 2014. There are many excellent U.S. agencies that you can use, but if you do NOT want to use an agency, you can select from among the few American attorneys that have received Hague approval. There is a list of currently accredited agencies and approved attorneys on the website of the U.S. State Department, at adoption.state.gov. Unless you are adopting from Korea, you can use an agency in any U.S. state.

Please don't hesitate to ask more questions, as you go through the adoption process.

Sharon

Last update on April 4, 12:07 am by Sharon Kaufman.