The Adoption Home Study Process: Fill & Download for Free

I have been reading about the development done with respect to infrastructure , good work done by the bjp government in the railways, etc etc. One point though is nowhere mentioned. I think that is because it effects a small percentage , extremely small percentage of the Indians - the orphans and the prospective adoptive parents.A little introduction first. I wanted to adopt a baby since a long time and hence kept reading and researching on the internet since the last 6 years. So I will write my experience before bjp and after bjp.Before bjp came into power the process of adoption was very chaotic. I never found from where I should start. After a lot of time I found a website CARA but it did not have proper information and even contained incomplete sentences as far as I can remember. Everything was muddy. There were several other websites with similar vague information . All I could understand was I will have to start from one of these websites and then wait indefinitely. Even if I submit the forms from my end, I could not be sure how many months it would take to get my home study done. How soon one brings the child home and what was happening during the waiting period nobody knew. What I could understand is people with influence power or money might get preference from the orphanages. After several months of such ambiguity I delayed my plans for adoption and kept checking the website intermittently.Then bjp came to power and meneka Gandhi held a meeting with the adoption agencies. Within a month the adoption process was streamlined. It was made clear CARA was the only official point of contact for legal domestic adoption. And now when I opened the website all the rules and regulations were written clearly. I immediately came to know where to start, which documents I needed to produce how and when the home study would happen. The website now even has SMS service to update registered parents. It has been made mandatory for the agencies to complete the home study within a month from registration. And now there is a queue and I can check where I stand in the queue online. So I will have an estimate of how long I need to wait. Several such steps have been taken which makes the process clear. Also there is enough clarity regarding the payments needed to be done. The process has been made more child centric which is the best part. So I have already registered and very near to meeting my baby soon. Thanks to team Modi for making this experience hassel free.This is a department nobody bothered ever because it doesn't affect the vote bank, but meneka Gandhi did.This answer is written from my personal experience and to me it seems this government is doing great work that will make our life better even when no one is looking.

When my older daughter was about 2 I took her to see her first movie in the theater, Lilo and Stitch. In many if not most Disney movies, the mother of the main character is dead, but in this movie, the older sister, who appears to be in her late teens or early 20’s is trying to maintain custody of the little girl. Dad is gone too, and there are apparently no other adults in the extended family to help out and the poor older sister is on her own. There is the menacing figure of the social worker, who threatens to take the child away. Some context-my older daughter was adopted, and we were in the process of adopting our second child. We had a home study, as we did with the first adoption. The person who performs the home study is-a social worker. We already had been through the process with the same agency, so they “knew” us, and we were not worried at all that we would not pass. We were inviting the social worker in, and we had no worries about maintaining custody of our child. She was an extremely sharp kid, even as a toddler, and I made a point of never calling the social worker by that term, for fear she would think she was in danger. So, we made a point of referring to “the nice lady who is helping us get your sister.” A lot of kids’ movies have scary topics around adoption and orphans. Funny thing was, during the home study itself, my kid decided to show off to the social worker, and lifted her shirt, exposing a torso completely covered with colorful band-aids. We were prepared to peel them off, to prove that the skin underneath was intact, but she recognized a toddler’s weird fashion sense, and just laughed. So much for the scary social worker.

Oh, I think at least one agency worker has been fired for doing a bad job.State adoptions out of foster care are not done by independent adoption agencies. They are done by CPS or DFCS or whatever the agency is in your state. Home studies are done months before adoption, and continued for months after adoption. It is just months, not for years afterwards.These cases are horrific. Adopting parents, when you read the stories, can be monsters. How, when can this be discovered.I know in my case the home study process took 5 months, before and after. Our home was investigated, employment verified, we were finger printed, had to supply references (which were thoroughly vetted).Adoption case workers, whether they be from State or an independent Adoption agency, are mandatory reporters. If any evidence of child abuse was present during the home study, which happens before and after the placement, it would have been reported.I imagine the biggest loophole is a private adoption done through a private attorney. Each state is different, but with private adoption the baby can be placed immediately after birth (rather than going into temporary foster care as is the case with Adoption agencies), and there is a home study only after placement. I wonder, with the awful case loads carried by social workers in state agencies, how quickly those private adoption home studies are complete.Bad adoption agencies have gone out of business. One of the largest international adoption agencies is now out of business due to terrible practices (Holt).When Adopted Children Are Killed, Who Is Responsible?I hope this helps.Becky