Exactly, what is a HOME STUDY?
 
As a social worker who performs home studies for families who seek to adopt a child, I get a lot of nervous people on the other end of the phone when I first speak with them about a home study. Think about it- the name itself-HOME STUDY sounds very….clinical, judging, and well scary!

I can’t tell you how many families I’ve worked with who have been petrified at the thought of me coming into their home. They clean and clean and then clean some more—every nook and cranny including the garage and attic. I sometimes think it’s the wife’s excuse to get some extra work out of her husband! I really try to help put families at ease when I meet with them but I know they can’t help but be nervous—I was as my husband and I waited for our social worker to arrive to conduct our first home study meeting! My husband joked—don’t you know the secret social worker handshake?!
 
A home study is essential to prospective adoptive families. There are various ways to look at the home study process (and it is a process). It requires a lot of paperwork from the prospective adoptive parent and includes gathering of documents such as marriage licenses, birth certificates, insurance policies, liabilities and assets, and autobiographies to name a few!

In essence the home study is a report about the adoptive parents, their past, present and future, their thoughts on children and parenting, and an assessment by the home study preparer of their ability to parent a child by adoption. The prospective family also takes a CPR class and other educational classes to prepare themselves for parenting. If you think about it, all parents (adoptive or not) would benefit from some pre screening!

Some of the other things discussed are the child parenting philosophies of each parent, how a married couple settles disagreements, do they have a Last Will and Testament and guardians named for their child/ren or their child to be. These are great things to discuss BEFORE having children and are often not discussed by many parents. The couple or parent going through an adoption home study really gets the BENEFIT of these discussions.

As the home study preparer, I am there to help and assist the couple or individual on their journey to become parents through adoption and in helping a child be placed with their forever family. What I am there to “study” if you will is not so much the home, but the love and the family that lives in the home.