Florida Adoption Law Firm

We have our consultation meeting set for late September with the adoption law firm in Florida. We're both very excited about it. We did get clarification that we can be listed with both our current agency as well as the law firm. In the meantime, we need to get our homestudy renewed. Believe it or not, it's been a whole year of waiting. So, that's what we're doing now. We need to go back and get employment, health, background checks, etc. done again. Hopefully it won't take too long to pull together since we did it once before. I've also joined a couple of adoption groups on Yahoo. One is for domestic agencies and the other is adoption scams. You can never be too careful. Dan and I are also reworking our profile that gets shared with prospective birthparents. The law firm doesn't need a whole binder, so we can play with the format a bit.
So, that's that for now. Until later ... -Jodi

Homestudy?

I've had a couple people recently ask me about a homestudy. What is it, what do you do? Well, a homestudy is a process you go through to ensure that you are ready, willing and able to become adoptive parents. It consists of three visits with a social worker.

First Meeting - We met, as a couple, with our social worker. This meeting is used to assess our relationship, our intention and simply to get to know us better as a couple.

Second Meeting - We met, as individuals, with our social worker. This meeting goes into more detail about our families, our childhood, and our thoughts and feelings about each other.

Third Meeting - We met, as a couple at our house with our social worker. This process includes a walkthrough of our home. We actually babyproofed the house and made sure it met foster home standards. We had a smoke alarm on each floor, but we had to add smoke alarms to each bedroom. We also put locks on kitchen and bathroom cabinets, inserted plastic covers over the outlets, added doorknob locks to the basement doors and developed and posted a family fire escape plan. Needless to say ... our home is ready today for a little one. After the walkthrough we met for a third time with our social worker. We talked about parenting goals and our life with a child (or two or three or four).

That entire process takes about 1 1/2 to 2 months to complete. Then you receive a document that summarizes EVERYTHING. That is a homestudy.
-Jodi