Home Assessment

snowgirl16 · April 2014

Can anyone who has gone through the home assessment and interviewing offer some advice and/or tips to get ready for our home assessment/interview? We are applying for domestic newborn adoption. We have the list of safety things we need to have in place for our home assessment; fire extinguishers, outlet protectors, cupboard locks, upstairs ladders, etc.

So, I'm mainly looking for advice and/tips for anything outside of the safety list we should be prepared for as well as maybe interview questions others had during their process.

Thanks!!

Dr.Loretta · April 2014

Most of our interview questions were revisiting questions from our autobiographies. Our SW also asked us about our neighborhood and town.

Typically anything you may be missing from a safety perspective will be minor and you will have an opportunity to correct.
GL!

[Deleted User] · April 2014

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CaptainSerious · April 2014

Some agencies only do one in-home visit, while others do them all in your home, so I don't know how in-dept your in-home interview will be. We had all our visits (4) in-home, so it covered our entire homestudy (adopted internationally).

Homestudy visits/interviews can get very personal, depending on the agency. We discussed everything. Family, friends, areas of friction in our marriage, any hard times we faced together or separately, prior relationships, how our family felt about each other, and how they felt about adoption. We talked briefly about our sex lives, and suffice it to say that our social worker probably knows us as well, if not better, than our best friends. Luckily, she was amazing at putting us as ease, and I felt like I was talking to an old friend right off the bat. Six years and two adoptions later, and I'm praying she can continue to do our postplacement visits (our country requires 4 years of visits).

As far as your home passing, don't worry. If anything isn't up to standards, they'll tell you, and all you'll have to do is fix it and have them come out and verify that you did before they complete the homestudy report. Easy-peasy. This isn't a test of your housekeeping, decorating, or landscaping abilities. All they care about is whether a child can be safe (and loved) in your home.

msditz00 · April 2014

Our first visit I had the dogs groomed, the house professionally cleaned, and was a nervous wreck. By the time they were finishing the home study up, I had the SW walking my dog (LOL that sounds awful, but they wanted to have my husband talk to a counselor alone to do a special write up since he has had addiction issues in the past. I told our SW that if I had to leave the house I was going to take it as an opportunity to exercise the dogs. She took one and I took one).

Everyone, including me, will tell you to relax. But I know that is impossible to do until you see for yourself how the process goes. So use it as an opportunity to purge everything you don't need and organize a bit!

alishakay · April 2014

I was a nervous wreck for ours as well. I bought outlet covers for all of my outlets, safety tie up contraptions for all of my mini blind cords, bought a fire extinguisher, had the fire dept come out and had an escape route drawn up, put safety devices on all doors under kitchen and bathroom sinks where I keep cleaning supplies, and the list goes on and on. Our SW never asked a single question regarding any of it! That was a waste of being freaked leading up to our home visits, but hey, we are baby proofed already! Lol

m5858 · April 2014

Hearing all these stories about home studies make me feel better. Our home study is on May 7th and between now and then, I'll be gone for a week and a half. It's nice to know I don't need to stress more than is necessary. I've spent the past couple months (on and off) downsizing and organizing our things to make room for a baby and to just make life more simple. Right now the two biggest obstacles in my way are the huge pile of clean laundry I need to put away and the piles of tools and home renovation things that need to be put back in the garage. We're in the middle of renovating our bathrooms.

arbutusbride · April 2014

I did not do anything out of the ordinary for our home visit except I mopped the day before instead of my regular mopping day. Our home visit with the SW lasted all of 20 minutes. It was more a formality since she did not feel that we were at risk for having an unsafe home. Honestly, your house will never be 100% clean when a child is there so they are looking for real life and how things are on a daily basis.

arbutusbride · April 2014

Just make sure the safety equipment (extinguishers and alarms) are in working condition. We had just bought our house and replaced all of the alarms since we didn't know when the previous owner installed them. We had it on our to do list anyway so it wasn't as if we did it solely for the home visit.

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