Family Assessment

Finally! Our Family Assessment, what most agencies call the Home Study, begins today. We got a call from Bethany on Monday saying that all our paperwork is in and that we need to schedule three meetings. Ironically, we've been off all summer, school is about to start, and we now need to schedule weekday meetings. Angie goes back to work this Wednesday, August 4, so we squeezed in the first meeting for today, Tuesday, August 3. One of the main purposes of today's meeting is to make some big decisions regarding our infant adoption service plan and openness options. All that translates into this: What are our preferences for age, physical impairments, mental impairments, family medical history, and level of openness with the the birth parents? We have filled out a questionnaire of YES, NO, and WILL CONSIDER for issues like these:

Birth mother is a victim of incest.
Birth parents have a criminal history.
Birth mother lacked consistent medical care.
Placement is multiple births.
We want to involve the birth parents in naming the child.

We had no idea all of these issues were involved, so the process has been interesting. We've gone back to the questionnaire over the past few months as we've learned more about the benefits of open adoption and the nature of children whose parents abused drugs prior to pregnancy, etc. We felt comfortable saying YES to issues that our own biological children may have had (anxiety, attention deficit, etc.) and are more and more comfortable with WILL CONSIDER than we used to be on issues such as contact with the birth parents.

We're going to Raleigh today to meet with our social worker, and then we'll go to Raleigh once more. Finally, she will come here to see our home and check it for safety. We may actually have to install the three smoke detectors that have been sitting in our laundry room.