Our Ethiopian Adoption

The importance of matching data

2008-12-03T21:10:00.001-06:00

I know, we owe you a real status report on where we're at, but you'll just have to wait a little bit longer. I did want to share a snag we've run into in the hopes that it'll save someone else some time. During the process you'll do (at least) two financial reports, and need two sets of employment letters with your salaries. One set is for the home study agency, the other is for the dossier directly.

I made the mistake of assuming that both financial reports should be current to the date when they are completed. Wrong. They should match, because the first set from the home study will be cited in the home study which is included as part of the Dossier. If the numbers are all different, it'll confuse some official somewhere along the line, and that's not what we want. We ran into a slightly more painful situation with Cindy's work letter. One had her bonus included as salary, and the other did not. Again, they need to match.

Why do we have to do two of these when one set is notarized and authenticated? I don't know, but it pays to pay attention to the details, and to send forms to your social workers frequently so that any inconsistencies get surfaced as early in the process as possible.

Rules of the Game

2008-11-16T21:31:00.003-06:00

I've really been putting off this post, because I'm probably going to mess up somewhere along the line. But, unless you're already familiar with the process of adopting from abroad, you'll probably be wildly confused by our later posts without this. Adopting from a foreign country can be a very long, and very very confusing process. The basic phases break down to:

The home study
The Dossier
Waiting
More Waiting
Going to get your child
After adoption

(step 0?) We started with our home study, but I think you could also begin by applying to your placing agency first. And then depending on whether they can do home studies or not, you might be referred to another agency. We have two agencies, one for the home study and follow up visits, and one for finding the child for us.

(step 1) The home study evaluates us, and our home to make sure everything is fit for the child we hope to bring into our family. There are some forms, some interviews with a social worker, training for adoption issues, fingerprints and the dreaded home visit. And after everything is complete, she takes her transcripts from the interviews and all the paperwork and creates a document dubbed "The Home Study." It's a long process, and governments can change requirements frequently and often. Our social worker here has been great in helping us deal with the ever changing laws, and having a good social worker is really important to keeping your frustration level down.

(step 2) The Dossier is a collection of more documents, including the home study, more recommendation letters, and seemingly a duplicate document of everything you have just prepared for the home study. But, in this case, everything needs to be notarized, notary stamp certified, all the i's dotted and t's crossed. The basic difference seems to be that this is consumed by the department of immigrations and both governments, so it's way more strict. In our case, being first time parents, we also have to take some amount of parent training as part of this phase.

(steps 3 & 4) We're not there yet, but I'm sure there is more to this than actually just waiting. Maybe, construction projects and getting more life insurance or something fun like that.

(step 5) This should be the fun part. Once a child is found for us, the courts do their thing, and we're giving a time period to go and pick up the child. In our case, we'll be given something like 2 months to go and travel to Ethiopia and we'll be spending about a week overseas while the rest of the process in Ethiopia finishes.

(step 6) When we get home, then we have to get a lawyer and have our child re-adopted in order to become a full-fledged American citizen. Some period after we have to have a regular visits from our home study social worker to check in. It's something like every 3 months for the first year, but basically just serves to make sure everyone is doing well.

I really hope there aren't any huge gaping inaccuracies in here, but if you find something out of whack, let us know. And, hopefully one of us will have the energy to post where we are in this process soon.

Blog Moved

2008-11-07T21:59:00.003-06:00

Although, we really never had much up here, we've moved to blogger. Mainly, it should make maintaining the blog a little easier, and hopefully it'll help get us to post a little more. We do have some news, but it'll have to wait till Cindy or I have a few more minutes to put some thoughts together.

Welcome!

2008-06-13T19:12:00.000-05:00

If you haven’t heard already we are adopting… ..a human. This is a big step for us, but we’re ready for it and we’re glad we can share it with all of you. This blog is a bit tardy, starting about a month into the process. But, I’m sure there will be plenty of amusement, drama, medical testing, and waiting to write about. That’s it for now, but we’ll be back soon with some of gory details of the journey.

-jason & cindy