We decided to use Evolve as our home study agency since we had just used them for Kate's adoption. Just before Christmas, our first set of paperwork was delivered to both agencies. With the holidays and people off on vacation, we'd have to wait until after the New Year to receive the information we'd need to move forward on the paperwork process.
FINALLY on Friday, January 4th, both my inbox and mailbox would be filled with long lists of forms to complete, trainings to take, questions to answer and documents to gather for both Hopscotch and Evolve. I initially thought I'd give myself until the end of January to complete the document requests, but once I started plugging away, I couldn't stop until I had done all I could do. On the following Monday, I dropped off all but a handful of the required documents to Evolve so that they could get started on our Home Study Report. I had hoped our social worker could begin writing our home study and once we had our last documents in hand, she could just plop in that information. BUT I'd eventually find out that's not how things work. The home study process requires a home visit as well. After asking 3 times to schedule our home visit, our social worker finally responded that we couldn't schedule the visit until our file was complete and she couldn't start on our Home Study Report until after the home visit.
The last documents we needed for our Home Study were the medical reports for Shane and I. These needed to be completed by our physicians and included blood work and a TB test. Thankfully we were able to get into the doctor's office fairly quickly. In the late afternoon of Thursday, January 17th, I hand delivered our remaining documents to Evolve. There wouldn't be enough time to review them until the next business day. Of course, they are not open on Friday and the following Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Ugh. Another holiday to slow us down.
On January 22, we received an email from Evolve that our file was complete (woo hoo!) and we could now schedule our home visit. Our social worker emailed a few date options, one being the very next day and we said, "YES! Come tomorrow!" It was a mad dash to get the house picked up and cleaned for our 8:00 am visit the next morning.
On Wednesday, January 23rd, our social worker arrived at our house. The visit was less than an hour (although she said to prepare for 2 hours.) While it's the same social worker that we've had for awhile now, we were still a tad nervous. Courtney, our social worker, asked us several questions then needed to interview each person, including the kids, separately. As luck would have it, Cole had come down with the stomach bug and wasn't feeling well, but he pulled through and answered her questions. After giving Courtney a tour of the house and answering her remaining questions, we were done with the visit! Another milestone to check off the list!
Throughout the month of January, I had also been gathering all the documents needed for our dossier. The dossier is the packet of documents that Guyana requires (things like birth certificates, marriage certificates, bank statements, etc). Thankfully the majority of the Guyana dossier documents is quite easy to collect. The only items that will take some time are our approved Home Study Report and our i-600a approval letter from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) which comes after the Home Study Report, thus the urgency in getting our Home Study Report completed ASAP.
Now we wait for our social worker to write our Home Study Report. She told us it could take a couple months to get it written and finalized. Please send prayers that she can get it wrapped up much quicker than that. Once she's done and our home study is approved, it'll be mailed to the USCIS for our i-600a approval. Approvals have been taking 10+ weeks. Fingers crossed that our approval happens quickly! The USCIS approval is the last step that needs to happen before our dossier can be sent to Guyana and we can officially be approved to adopt our daughter by the Guyanese government.
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