The adoption process is not straight forward to understand and navigate, especially the international adoption process. There are social workers, agencies, governments, paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork. Some of the most frequent questions we've gotten from the people we've told in person is about the process. It's overwhelming to grasp, but we're taking it one step at a time and we have help.
Our adoption education binder and folder with our mountain of paperwork; next to sleeping Sven for scale .
Probably the first or second question everyone asks is how long does this take. It's a long process, we're told it could be 1-3 years from when we initiate the process to when we officially make the addition to our family. Generally speaking there is the application and homestudy period, waiting for approval, waiting to be matched with a child (also known as receiving a referral), and once we accept a referral, a waiting period before traveling to bring our child home. We're hoping our timeline is on the shorter side, though we're trying to prepare our selves for anything.
Before we even begin waiting to be matched with a child we have to meet all the requirements. In terms of the process, we have have to meet three levels of requirements; State of Wisconsin, Federal, and the Indian Government. These requirements include educational hours, financial, health, and home safety, just to name a few. All of this information is documented and provided to each entity.
Fortunately, we have help in organizing and preparing all the necessary documents. We are primarily working with two agencies right now. Catholic Charities out of Lacrosse and the World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP). Catholic Charities has primarily prepared us to meet State and Federal requirements and is preparing our homestudy. WACAP will be our primary conduit for international interactions and coordination. They will provide us with a referral, and we'll work with them to understand as much as we can about our future child before we travel to meet that child.
Traveling to India is a long ways away right now, we're still working our way through the homestudy. The homestudy essentially describes that we are reasonably able and qualified to raise a child. Maybe we'll spend some more time describing the process in the future. Jamie, our social worker from Catholic Charities, is working on writing that document. Over about a five week period we met three times with Jamie. She spent four or five hours interviewing us on our backgrounds, strengths, weaknesses, and beliefs. During this period we also worked our way through about 35-40 hours of education materials, documented our finances, got physicals, tracked down pet vaccination records, and so many other things I'm forgetting about.
Over the next several weeks Jamie will write our home study and submit it to WACAP. Once approved by WACAP, all the documents will be sent to India. Ideally, we'll be approved quickly. Then the waiting game for a match begins. It could take several months. Once we get a referral we'll need to make a decision about if it's a good fit for us. If it is then we'll start preparing to travel. Though our wait could be as long as 6-12 months before we actually go meet the child.
Comments