Our licensed home study professionals have over 18 years of experience conducting home studies. We provide home studies for both domestic and international adoptions. We strive for efficiency and organization, all the while maintaining a feeling of warmth and compassion that must come with growing families.
What is a Home Study?
A home study is a comprehensive process that involves meeting with a highly trained adoption social worker. The social worker conducts a series of interviews with a prospective family and their references to assess the family’s reasons for adoption, family interactions, plans for caring for and raising the baby and other information relevant to the adoption. The adoption social worker is working to screen a family in to the adoption process, as well as give the prospective adoptive family an education about adoption.
The home study also requires the adoptive family to submit a number of documents. A step by step instruction manual explains what documents are required and guides the adoptive family through the process.
While going through the home study process, the adoptive family will learn more about adoption and explore what adoption and parenting mean to them. The home study also helps the adoption agency learn about the family’s adoption wishes which helps to carefully match an adoptive family with a birth family and baby.
The findings from the home study and all the documents submitted by the family are compiled into a final home study report. Although birth parents don’t see the home study report, knowing that the home study approved the adoptive family reassures birth parents that the baby will grow up in a safe and loving home.
Why is it important?
A Home Study helps to discover your suitability as an adoptive parent. This information gives birth mothers and birth father the peace of mind knowing that their child will be going to a stable, safe and loving home. The Home Study process also instructs and assists the adoptive family in the management of the transitional emotions of joy and stress when welcoming a new child into their life. The Home Study is to “screen in” a family – rather than “screen out.” The home study social worker reaches out to the prospective adoptive family in a supportive, positive and affirming manner to help make the adoption process positive and loving.
How long is the process?
A home study can take up to 90 days to complete once the family has submitted all of the necessary documents. There are many forms that must be completed and documents that must be acquired. It is best to get started on your Home Study as soon as you decide to adopt. Because the Home Study is such an integral part of the adoption process, it is essential to have a positive feeling about the agency and social worker conducting the home study. At Adoption Makes Family, we consider it an honor to participate in a family’s efforts to adopt a child. As such, we feel very positive about our role in conducting a home study. (The home study must be completed by an agency licensed in the State in which you live.)
To start the Home Study process, call 410-683-2100 for more information.
Or you can also download the application here and send it to the agency with the $500 application fee.