Paper Pregnancy
Make no mistake, adoption involves a lot of paperwork. America World, our adoption agency, likes to call this phase the "paper pregnancy." That is a pretty descriptive way of putting it! It requires a good deal of energy and perseverance to get through this first leg of the process. By the end let's just say we were glad to have this stage behind us.
We began by gathering all of the basic documents such as birth and marriage certificates. As we were waiting for these documents we set up our home study. The home study involved a licensed social worker interviewing us on four different occasions. She interviewed the two of us together on the first visit. This first interview was pretty thorough, covering everything from our motivation to adopt to our parenting philosophy. We met at our home so that she could walk through our house to make sure it is a safe environment for an adopted child. She was also able to observe our two boys.
The second and third visits were separate interviews of Jennifer and I. These visits covered our family backgrounds and the history of our relationship with each other. We talked a lot about how we as a couple relate to each other, and about our current family dynamics. The final visit was another interview with us together. This interview was basically about tying up whatever loose ends had not been covered previously.
The paper chase continued as we made visits to our local police station and State Bureau of Investigation for background checks and fingerprinting. We had to produce a financial statment, employment verification letters, and an application to the China Adption Affairs office. We had to have medical exams, and make a visit to the Immigration Services office. Nearly every document we gathered had to be notarized. Thankfully, a good friend from our church is a notary, and was very generous to notarize things for us.
Once the documents were gathered, they had to be sent to their state of origin to be authenticated. Then some had to be sent to the U.S. Secretary of State's office for certification. Finally, everything had to be sent to the Chinese embassy (actually in our case three separate offices) for certification. As we waded through the paperwork we faxed documents to our family coordinator at America World. She made sure everything was order. Our final step was to put together a short family picture album. When the process was over we finally sent everything off to them.
The final product that is sent to China is called the "dossier." Within just a couple of days of receiving it from us, America World sent our dossier off to China. It was logged in on August 8, 2005 in China. There are no guarantees as to how long our wait will be from this point. However, as things have been going, it will probably take six months before we would receive our "referral." The referral is notification of having been matched with a child. It includes a picture of the child and whatever information is available about the child's background.
We began by gathering all of the basic documents such as birth and marriage certificates. As we were waiting for these documents we set up our home study. The home study involved a licensed social worker interviewing us on four different occasions. She interviewed the two of us together on the first visit. This first interview was pretty thorough, covering everything from our motivation to adopt to our parenting philosophy. We met at our home so that she could walk through our house to make sure it is a safe environment for an adopted child. She was also able to observe our two boys.
The second and third visits were separate interviews of Jennifer and I. These visits covered our family backgrounds and the history of our relationship with each other. We talked a lot about how we as a couple relate to each other, and about our current family dynamics. The final visit was another interview with us together. This interview was basically about tying up whatever loose ends had not been covered previously.
The paper chase continued as we made visits to our local police station and State Bureau of Investigation for background checks and fingerprinting. We had to produce a financial statment, employment verification letters, and an application to the China Adption Affairs office. We had to have medical exams, and make a visit to the Immigration Services office. Nearly every document we gathered had to be notarized. Thankfully, a good friend from our church is a notary, and was very generous to notarize things for us.
Once the documents were gathered, they had to be sent to their state of origin to be authenticated. Then some had to be sent to the U.S. Secretary of State's office for certification. Finally, everything had to be sent to the Chinese embassy (actually in our case three separate offices) for certification. As we waded through the paperwork we faxed documents to our family coordinator at America World. She made sure everything was order. Our final step was to put together a short family picture album. When the process was over we finally sent everything off to them.
The final product that is sent to China is called the "dossier." Within just a couple of days of receiving it from us, America World sent our dossier off to China. It was logged in on August 8, 2005 in China. There are no guarantees as to how long our wait will be from this point. However, as things have been going, it will probably take six months before we would receive our "referral." The referral is notification of having been matched with a child. It includes a picture of the child and whatever information is available about the child's background.
posted by Shawn at
Monday, September 05, 2005
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