I believe it is important for adoptive parents to share as much information about their journey as possible in order to assist those on the journey and those who will come after. Joe and I are so grateful for those parents who shared their evaluations, of their agency, home study provider, country, translator, and many more. So, we would like to offer our evaluation of our home study provider. We used American Adoptions (1-800-ADOPTION; www.americanadoption.com). We completed our application and sent our payment at the end of April. We were contacted on May1st to set up our appointments. The first appointment was on May 10th. At this time we were interviewed seperately.
The second appointment was supposed to be on May 17th, but our social worker needed to change the appointment and we did once as well, so it occured on May 25th. At this time we had our "couple" interview and home inspection. Everything went smoothly. The woman conducting our home study was very nice and made us feel comfortable throughout the process.
We received our homestudy documents on July3rd. After carefully reading through the documents we were very upset to discover that there were a few MAJOR mistakes. Our social security numbers were wrong and several sections referred to us as "Susan" and "Bill". I contacted our home study coordinator immeditely and she promptly returned my call. She apologized and informed me that the corrections would be made asap and sent out immediately. I also follwed up with a detailed e-mail to the social worker who conducted the home study outlining the changes that needed to be made.
We received all of the corrected documents today (July 12th) and everything is in order. If we calculate the time it took to complete from the first interview date (May 10th) it took nine weeks to get our completed home study. This time frame seems to be in line with others I have heard. However, the agency does advertise that their "turn around time for the home study is four to six weeks...assuming that the background checks are complete." If turn around time is considered from the last visit to the day you receive the home study, then it would have been exactly six weeks if no errors existed. Time sensitivity is extremely important to us, as well as the rest of you on this tedious paperwork journey. So, if that time frame is better than others have quoted to you that may be something you take into account if you are looking for a home study provider or you are considering using American Adoptions. Overall, their services were very good. Everyone was professional and courteous to us at all times. When there was a problem they fixed it is a timely fashion.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Evaluation of American Adoptions (Home Study)
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I think you did pretty good in the homestudy department as far as time goes. Ours took exactly two months once we said we wanted the homestudy (we'd already had a visit for a post placement report) to get the report and I was able to then send it to BCIS. It took another 22 days to get the other documents from them for the dossier but it didn't end up costing us time because we got them before the I-171H showed up and we had to wait for that anyways. That was a long 22 days though as I was starting wonder if they really would be able to have five documents notarized by the same person. LOL They did. Our dossier was approved by our agency today and headed for translation!
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