Second Home Study Meeting

We had our second home study meeting this afternoon. First, our social worker briefly went over the I-600A, which is the Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition. We will complete and submit that in the next few weeks/months. I'm still trying to learn all the immigration steps involved in this process. Look for a blog post on that in the next week or so -- hopefully. I want to get a good understanding of the process for my own sake (I'm just a little obsessive about details), and I figure I might as well blog about what I learn.

Today was the day for individual interviews. Our social worker spent about an hour with each of us (separately) and asked us about our childhoods, our marriage, and our plans for parenting. She basically just went a bit more in-depth on the information we provided in the self study (see the last two pages of this document). Neither of us likes talking about ourselves all that much, so that made the interviews -- well, probably not our favorite activity ever. Overall though, we were comfortable with the interviews and the questions she asked.

In addition to the immigration paperwork and individual interviews, we also discussed the adoptive parent training requirement. We each must complete 18 hours of training. Eight of those hours have to be in-person training, and another five hours are online courses required by Lifelink. Our home study counts for an additional two hours. So, that leaves us with only three more hours to complete. We will get those hours by reading books or watching DVDs about adoption.

As far as paperwork goes -- We've completed about half of the paperwork we were given at the first home study meeting, and we turned those forms in today. We will complete most of the rest of it in the next month or so and get that turned in at the next meeting.

While there are still plenty of things that have to take place in the upcoming months before we're "paper-ready," we continue to look forward to the day we receive that phone call about a referral...and especially to the day we finally hold our child in our arms!

Is Adoption Expensive?

Often it seems that one of the first things people think of when they hear the word adoption is “Wow, I’ve heard that’s really expensive.” (Another thing people seem to automatically think of is infertility, but I’ll leave that topic for another post…perhaps several other posts.)

So, is adoption expensive? I think that largely depends on how you define expensive. Adoption most definitely does require a major commitment from parents -- emotionally AND financially.

First, to answer the question How much does adoption cost? I will speak only for international adoption, since I’m not very familiar with domestic adoption. (If anyone wants to share what they know about the cost of domestic adoption – newborn or older child - that would be great.) International adoption ranges from about $20,000 to $60,000 and is largely dependent on the country from which one is adopting. Our adoption from South Korea will cost around $30,000 - $35,000. This includes the home study, Lifelink fees, Eastern fees, fees for immigration paperwork, travel to South Korea, and a few other miscellaneous expenses.

Next, many people wonder Why is adoption so expensive? On the surface it seems that since there are so many children in need of homes that adoption should be free. In an ideal world, that would be the case. (Of course, in an ideal world, there also wouldn’t be any orphans.) Adoption is a very complex process with different parties involved every step of the way. There are social workers, administrators, government employees, caregivers, and others. All these people are compensated for the work they do (just like the rest of us are when we go to work everyday). When you consider everything that takes place in the adoption of a child (and in caring for the child up to the time he/she is placed in a new home), the expense of adoption begins to make a lot more sense.

As a side note, there seems to be among some people an idea that international adoption is full of corruption and that countries are profiting from “selling” babies to wealthy couples. I’m sure there are isolated instances of corruption in some countries, but I assure you that by and large, no one is getting rich in international adoption. Caring for children in orphanages or foster homes is very expensive, and the agencies/orphanages in foreign countries use adoption fees to help cover their expenses.

When I think about the enormity of what is taking place in an adoption – transferring parental rights from one party to another (especially when the parties involved live in two different countries on opposite sides of the world) – the complexities and expenses involved make a lot more sense. In a way, it wonderfully illustrates the high value of human life. (and by value, I am not referring to monetary value, but to the innate worth of human life) It shouldn’t be a simple process to move a child to a new country, a new culture, a new home, and most of all, to the care of new parents. If it were simply a matter of making a few phone calls and getting a child a few days later, I think it might on some level cause us to look at children as a commodity and miss seeing how incredibly valuable these little lives are. (Don’t get me wrong – I do wish adoption were a faster, easier, and less expensive process, but I appreciate the beauty in what’s represented by the anticipation, preparation, and cost involved in adoption.)

I’m afraid that many people let the expense of adoption keep them from seriously considering it for their families. If God has placed adoption on your heart, please don’t dismiss it because you think it’s just too expensive. If God leads you to adopt, He will provide the funds for that adoption. Now, His provision will almost certainly not be money falling from the sky and will most likely involve sacrifices on your part – quite likely big sacrifices, but I assure you that adopting a child will be worth every sacrifice you make.

I looked up expensive, and one definition I found is “price paid only for something special.” I like that definition. Something very special – and totally worth the long wait, emotional rollercoaster, and financial sacrifice! :-)

Orphans & Adoption

Since we won't always have news to report on our adoption process, we plan to post other items related to adoption from time-to-time.  This is a video done by Together For Adoption.  The video does a great job of highlighting the orphan crisis around the world.

We are very blessed to live in the United States; however, our affluence and wealth tend to blind us to the realities around the world.

Why South Korea?

One of the questions we've been asked quite a few times is How did you choose Korea?, so I thought I would share a bit (or a lot perhaps) about what drew us to Korea.

First, I want to emphasize that there are many wonderful countries from which to adopt. Korea is in no way the best country for international adoption. It simply fit what we were looking for. We know people who have adopted from other countries, and they had great experiences with their adoption processes.

•  One of the biggest factors the led us to Korea is the relatively short (and predictable) wait time for a child. As we shared a couple of weeks ago, Lifelink is currently estimating a wait of 12 months for referral, and then we'll travel 3-6 months later to pick up our child. That makes a total wait from application to referral of 15-18 months, which is fairly short in the world of international adoption.
• Another major factor for us in choosing Korea is the stability of the program. Korea is the oldest international adoption program in the United States, and the Korean government is very stable. This means we are less likely to have unexpected problems/delays during the adoption process. (Although there are no guarantees in international adoption.)
• Almost all of the children available for adoption in Korea are infants. This works out great for us -- since this will be our first child, we have a strong preference to adopt a child as young as possible. (As a side note, our child will be about 9-12 months old when we bring him home. This is due to the fact that Korean babies must be available for adoption in Korea for five months before they are available for international adoption, then the post-referral paperwork will take another 3-6 months.)
• I think everyone knows that international adoption isn't cheap. However, Korea is one of the less expensive countries from which to adopt. Money wasn't our primary consideration in choosing a country, but it did factor into our decision.
• The fact that an adoption from Korea costs less than from many other countries is largely due to the fact that Korea doesn't require that adoptive parents stay in country for an extended period of time as some other countries do. We will travel to Korea only once for about a week when we pick up our child. Some other countries require multiple trips and/or a several week stay in country. While we are very excited to travel to Korea, we're thankful that we won't need to be away from home for several weeks and that we'll be able to use most of our parental leave to enjoy time with our child at home, instead of spending that time visiting him in an orphanage.
• In researching countries and agencies, we found an agency with an office close to our home and a great program with Korea. With further research (which largely involved reading blogs), we found that clients of Lifelink overall seemed to be very pleased with the agency.

Some of these things carried more weight than others in our decision, but none of them was an absolute requirement for us. We choose Korea because it seemed to be the most in line with the things that are important to us.

Like I said, there are many wonderful adoption programs in other countries as well (including the United States). Korea was just the program that best fit our lives right now.

I plan to do more posts over the upcoming weeks to answer questions about adoption, Korea, and other topics. Future topics include --

• How much does international adoption cost and why is it so expensive?
  
• Why are their children available for adoption in a developed, wealthy nation like South Korea?
• Why are there more boys available than girls?

I have some other ideas in the back of my mind as well. If you have something you're wondering about, leave a comment or email me, and I'll try to answer your question.

First Home Study Meeting

We had our first home study meeting Thursday afternoon, and everything went smoothly. We spent almost two hours with our social worker and really enjoyed the time. We’re very impressed with her; she’s friendly, easy to talk to, and very knowledgeable. She asked us some questions about our lives – our jobs, our decision to adopt, and friends’ reactions to our adoption news. We also discussed some of the challenges we may face as adoptive parents.

Our social worker went over the first round of paperwork we need to fill out. It doesn’t seem bad at all. Here is a list of the documents we’ll be filling out and collecting over the next couple of weeks.

• Form giving Lifelink permission to obtain pertinent information about us (police and driving records, employment verification, character references, insurance verification, etc.)
• Several forms dealing with criminal history, background checks, etc.
• Medical information – to be completed and signed by a physician
• Financial information
• Child foster care licensing checklist – This basically lists all the safety standards our home must meet in order to be licensed as a foster home. Our social worker will make sure we are in compliance when she visits our home for the final home study meeting.
• Home exit planner – We will provide a floor plan of our home, with arrows and notes indicating how each room is to be evacuated in case of fire.
• Local police check – We will write a letter to our local police department, asking for a notarized letter indicating that we have no criminal history.
• Driver record information request – to be mailed to the State Department of Transportation, requesting a copy of our driving records
• Letters from our employers indicating job title, annual salary, and length of employment
• Copies of birth certificates and marriage license
• Copy of our most recent federal tax return
• Copy of our dog's vaccinations
• Letter from our vet that our dog has a good demeanor and gets along well with children

It looks like a long list, but a lot of these things will take very little time to complete. We also discussed adoptive parent training. We are each required to complete 18 hours of training, which can be in the form of seminars, DVDs, or books.

We have our next meeting Monday, September 28. At that meeting, we will each meet individually with our social worker. Either at that time or shortly thereafter, our social worker will go over the immigration paperwork we need to complete.

Quick Update

Just a brief update – We finished the self study over the weekend, and we have our first home study meeting tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon.

For those of you who are interested in seeing the initial application form we submitted about a month ago as well as the self study questions, we’ve posted them here. The first six pages are the initial application, and the last two are the self study questions. We submitted the application about four weeks ago to get on the waiting list, and we submitted the self study Tuesday morning.  Our completed self study is about eight pages long.

We’ll update sometime over the weekend about our meeting tomorrow. I think the real paperwork fun is about to begin!

Keeping up with Brad & Dena

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The Adoption Process

It seems that one of the most common questions we're asked about the adoption is Where are you in the process? So, I thought I'd try to explain a bit about adopting from Korea and where we are right now.

We submitted our initial application about three weeks ago. This application was about six pages long and covered our basic information -- dates of birth and marriage, social security numbers, education, employment information, etc. A few days after submitting the application to our agency (Lifelink), we were notified that we were officially on the waiting list. Lifelink is somewhat unique in international adoption in that they put individuals on the waiting list upon submission of the initial application, instead of at completion of home study (at least when adopting from South Korea), as most agencies do.

We are now working on the self study, which basically requires us to write about our lives from childhood to the present. It covers topics such as the homes in which we were raised, relationships with siblings, feelings about school as a child, current contact with family members, hobbies & interests, dating & courtship, our expectations of marriage, how we handle conflict in marriage, and motivation for adoption. We are planning to finish up the self study in the next few days and send it to our social worker.

Then, next week we have the first meeting of our home study. A home study might sound pretty intimidating (at least it did to me), but it's actually not bad at all from what we hear. The home study consists of four meetings, at the end of which our social worker will write a report documenting the fact that we would be good parents. (We hope that's what she says at least!) For our first home study meeting next week, we will meet with our social worker at her office. Then, for the second and third meetings, Brad and I will meet with her individually at her office. Our social worker will then meet with us together in our home for the fourth meeting. As part of this meeting, she will make sure that our home is a safe, healthy environment for a child.

At the meeting next week, our social worker will go over the list of documents we need to collect/complete as part of the home study, as well as the immigration paperwork that we need to do. We are also required to take part in adoptive parent training, so we're hoping to find out exactly what's involved in that next week as well. We're looking forward to getting all this information so we can get rolling on everything we need to do.

Another thing we have to do is become licensed as a foster home.  Korea is unlike most other countries in that the legal adoption is done in the United States instead of the country from which the child is adopted. So, we will legally adopt our child in a local court six months after we return from Korea. For that six-month period, the child will technically be our foster child.

We will most likely not complete the home study until at least the end of this year, and more likely sometime early next year. We are intentionally dragging out the home study a bit (at the suggestion of Lifelink) so it doesn't expire before we receive a referral (meaning our name has made its way to the top of the list and we are matched with a child). Once the home study is complete, we don't really have any further paperwork or training to do until referral. So, we will spend this time preparing our home for the arrival of our child!

When we receive a referral (current estimate is around 12 months from application, so late summer or early fall 2010), we will then have more paperwork to do...followed by more waiting while documents are processed by the US government, the agency in Korea, and the Korean government. We're not very familiar with this part of the process yet, but I'm sure we'll learn. It takes 3-6 months after referral for all the immigration paperwork to be done so our child is ready to come home.

Once we get the call that our child is ready to travel, we will be on a flight to Seoul within a couple of days to meet him and bring him home. Korea is one of the very few countries that allows children to be escorted to the United States (instead of the parents traveling), but we, like many adoptive parents, are excited to travel to Korea! We are looking forward to seeing where our child spent the first months of his life, experiencing the culture of Korea for a few days, and taking lots of pictures!!

Korea is also unique in that the children are cared for by foster families, rather than in orphanages. From everything we've heard, the foster mothers are amazing women who love these babies and take incredible care of them. We look forward to meeting our child's foster family in Korea and hopefully maintaining contact with them after that.

You might notice that I refer to our child as he. We are almost certain we will be referred a boy. There are more boys than girls available for international adoption in Korea, so those families not requesting a certain gender are usually referred a boy. When I say "almost certain we will be referred a boy," that means it is at least 99% sure. So, we are fully planning for a boy but will be absolutely thrilled either way.

Well, that was probably more information than you wanted about adopting from Korea. We want to reiterate that we are very open to questions. Feel free to post a comment here, shoot us an email, or catch us in "real life" to ask ANY questions you might have.

We are so thankful for our amazing family and friends. The excitement, love, and support you expressed when we announced our plans last week mean so much to us! We appreciate your prayers as we continue down this road.