Confused about homestudy "ownership"

lafayettegirl

I've posted about this before, but I need some more advice from the experienced posters in the group.

Our agency will not give us a copy of our homestudy. They will only send it directly to an agency, and will not send it to lawyers. In addition, the agency says the State of Virginia prohibits releasing background checks to other agencies.  This makes it REALLY hard to send our information to a situation that is moving quickly. I thought that when we paid for all this stuff it was ours. We were never told we would not get a copy of the homestudy to keep. This seems like such BS, especially since many of you and people we know have a copy. In fact, when we were trying to get our profile to a mother working with an adoption attorney, the coordinator in the attorney's office was not only surprised, but offended that our agency would refuse to send our homestudy to a licensed adoption attorney.

Anyone have any advice, OTHER than getting another homestudy and background checks done? We are hemorrhaging money, between printing more profiles, overnighting applications and profiles, application fees, etc.

There has got to be a better way, right? Please tell me there is a better way...

crene84

Wow, I am not really sure what you can do, but my company sent us 3 copies of the home study, PLUS one was sent directly to our attorney.  She wanted to make sure we had plenty of copies.  Again, we are going independently and from what I've read, working with an agency can cause all sorts of unexpected issues.  I hope you're able to get this settled with them.  Good luck!

lafayettegirl

Spooko:

Yes! I got your email and thank you!

erinmc1

We needed a copy of our homestudy for one grant that I we applied for.  I know it's a bit underhanded, but could you ask for a copy under that guise?

silliestbunny

We were in a similar mess.   It depends on state laws AND the interpretation of the laws made by your agency.

A couple of thoughts- 

1-  Review the state laws.  My guess is that it's your criminal record info that can not be released.  This law is in place to help people but in our cases it hurts us since we can't share it.

2-   Speak with the lawyers you'd like to work with.. what exactly do they need?  Can they call your agency and speak to the director?  Sometimes we don't speak the same language as the agency.  I found this to work in most instances.  The lawyers would find that they'd get what they needed.  I found that our agency would release to the sending state once we were at ICPC stage.  When the lawyer understood the process, they were okay w/the summary that our agency provided.

 3-  Call another agency in your state and ask how they deal with the same problems since this is probably based on the interpretation of the law.

 

I am so sorry you are dealing with this... I nearly cried for a week straight trying to sort this all out.  It's so confusing and such a pain!

IRR

It would seem to me your attorney should be able to get this.  What does the attorney say?  Our SW sent us a copy of our HS to review before she made it official in case she forgot anything we wanted included.  Seems very odd to me, but perhaps it has to do with your state.  Sorry that sounds very frustrating.