did any one.....

[Momma Aimee]

did anyone do their hs before chooseing and adgency (international)??

I was reading on rainbow kids earily today -- about a lot of stuff -- and on the photo list and other places it routinely comments "hs ready families".

So I am wondering -- who has gotten a home study done FIRST -- before hooking with an adgency? What about before chooseing a counrty?

If you did this -- how were you sure your HS would be accepted / cover everything -- for the adgency and country you finally chose?

What are the pros or cons to this approach -- as opposed to finding an adgency and working with them every step of the way -- i suppose you have more freedom in finding a child -- not tied to one adgency -- ?? correct? what am I missing?

Educate me. How, why? how did it turn out. Glad you did it this way?

Aimee

[RedOakMomma]

I think the "homestudy ready" families must be referring to domestic adoption families?? Or perhaps families that have adopted once in the past and have a completed homestudy to just "update" before their next international adoption? I'm sure someone has an answer....

For a first-time international adoption, I would think you'd want your social worker to help you tailor the HS for the unique needs of the program you're applying to. I'm not sure, though...I guess, if you were doing a lot of it on your own, you could have just a generic "homestudy document" that you could include in all of your international adoption paperwork.

Curious. Very curious. I'll have to check out this month's mag....

[JunipersMom]

The paper-ready is for International adoptions through the rainbowkids site. You can go either way and be fine. Most agencies will have recommendations of social workers to work with - either way you need the homestudy and when you choose an agency they will more than likely talk with your social worker to get the homestudy as the country you decide on requires anyway. Being paper-ready isnt just the homestudy though - it means having all of your dossier requirement paperwork together also... so you will need to do some homework on the country of your choice to get all that done and that is the part that the agency can really help you with - so from that stand-point it will probably be easier to get 'paper ready' with the help of an agency.

[annethcz]

We started our homestudy before we had completely decided on an international program. Actually, when we started we thought we'd be adopting from Haiti. For a number of reasons, that didn't work out. By the time we were ready to finish up our homestudy, we had chosen the Ethiopian program.

I would think that most families would need to tweak their homestudy to be appropriate for the specific country, since every country's requirements seem to be just a little different.

[Diane B]

I would say it depends on your timeline. Homestudies for different countries require some different components. So, if you don't want to spend time and money redoing parts of it, I would suggest at least selecting a country first, and being sure that the person doing the homestudy is familiar with the country requirements. At least in Guatemala, issues with the homestudy can slow things up quite a bit if certain things are skipped or not stated correctly. Sometimes, different agencies have slightly different preferences for homestudy content too.

"Paper-ready" could mean a homestudy as well as additional approval from BCIS (which requires finger prints, and additional documents and a form who's name I have blessedly now forgotten...) - or at least that's the case in the Guatemalan adoption world. We really appreciated having an agency to guide us through all of this, but some people definitely do it on their own.

Finally, I would be really cautious about finding a child through a photo listing and "falling in love" without knowing a thing about the agency responsible. I have had friends who got into a big mess this way with a disreputable agency. Since they had already made a commitment in their hearts to the child, they followed through, but it was pretty rough.

[Momma Aimee]

Diane -- We won't fall in love that way -- too scarey -- i was looking more for GENERAL idea of ages in different areas.....

I think we will find an adgecy first -- so i have a guide......

Question -- how do yu even start to choose an adgency or country?

A