Just got a call from a weird number...I don't answer those often and today was no exception. Checked my voicemail and it was a woman from DSS named April who was calling to do our home visit. "Okay" I thought, "no problem"..our DSS worker had told us this was kind of a technicality and I didn't think much of it.... Until I called her back.... April is a very bubbly woman who had a lot to say. I got the short story about her entire family life in the first 2 minutes. After finding out that she works mainly at night doing home visits for DSS , she told me she'd like to go ahead and schedule the first of TWO visits. We scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
Before we hung up, I quickly asked her if she could give me an idea of what the visit would entail. That's when she told me!
I have always heard people talk about "home studies" for adoption, and it's always seemed very complicated and deep. Turns out this is the same process. Not exactly the simple "check if we're crazy" visit that I was expecting. More like a "dark room with a single light in your face" visit.
Actually this is going to take a minimum of 2 hours (whhhhatt???) and will include her talking about everything under the sun from our background, how we met, our children, how we discipline them, how we were disciplined, why we want to be foster parents, who our friends are, what we would do "if" scenarios, and possibly even a tour of our home to check again and again for fire extinguishers and window sizes....(that's a short list compared to everything she mentioned)
Don't get me wrong, this shouldn't be a big deal but it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I mean I have a government clearance for goodness sake and I've never felt like I was going to be grilled quite like this. In fact, she said the next visit will also be about 2 hours (dude!) and that they will go through a detailed questionnaire about our finances. Also not what I had expected. Sooooo... not exactly as close to the finish line as I had thought. Although she is trying to schedule the next visit for sometime next week.
Sigh...onward march.....
Before we hung up, I quickly asked her if she could give me an idea of what the visit would entail. That's when she told me!
I have always heard people talk about "home studies" for adoption, and it's always seemed very complicated and deep. Turns out this is the same process. Not exactly the simple "check if we're crazy" visit that I was expecting. More like a "dark room with a single light in your face" visit.
Actually this is going to take a minimum of 2 hours (whhhhatt???) and will include her talking about everything under the sun from our background, how we met, our children, how we discipline them, how we were disciplined, why we want to be foster parents, who our friends are, what we would do "if" scenarios, and possibly even a tour of our home to check again and again for fire extinguishers and window sizes....(that's a short list compared to everything she mentioned)
Don't get me wrong, this shouldn't be a big deal but it wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I mean I have a government clearance for goodness sake and I've never felt like I was going to be grilled quite like this. In fact, she said the next visit will also be about 2 hours (dude!) and that they will go through a detailed questionnaire about our finances. Also not what I had expected. Sooooo... not exactly as close to the finish line as I had thought. Although she is trying to schedule the next visit for sometime next week.
Sigh...onward march.....
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