Last Homestudy visit and first parenting class
Our last homestudy visit was yesterday. This should have been 'the long one' but it wasn't that bad. Brent and I were interviewed seperately and the social worker just asked questions about our parents, childhood, school, faith, etc. Mine was about 45 minutes and Brent's was 25. Very easy. The whole homestudy was much, much easier than I anticipated it would be.
We also had our house inspection, which was also very easy. I was afraid that this guy would be more particular than our mini-homestudy social worker, but he wasn't. He just looked in every room, told us to put the plate back on the side of the furnace and that was that. He didn't even comment on my awesome cleaning skills. :)
So now our part of the homestudy is finished - we just have to wait for the social worker to write it up and send it to us. He said he should be done with that in a week or two.
Then last night was our first parenting class, sort of. There is a new Wisconsin law that says that every new adoptive parent needs to take 16 hours of parenting classes, covering specific adoption topics. The law is so new, however, that our homestudy agency doesn't have a class formed yet. But their sister agency (not in our district) does have one. So instead of going to Milwaukee, we're going to Green Bay for our classes.
But, after all that, part of the training is an orientation class which our agency does have in place, so our social worker wanted us to take that class with him. So last night we went to Milwaukee. Whew - got all that?
Since it was just an orientation, everyone else there was only thinking about adoption, we were the only couple who was already halfway through the process. Our social worker even told us that the class would be all things we already knew and probably be boring, but we had to go anyway. He was right - it was kind of boring.
The class was about 2 hours long they talked about the history of the agency, what to expect in the homestudy, and then the difference between domestic and international adoption. I didn't really know much about Wisconsin domestic adoption so that part was interesting. I was disappointed that they didn't talk more about being open to older children. Not older as in school-aged, but even just toddlers. They pretty much only talked about domestic as adopting a newborn. Most of the families initially said they were interested in domestic, but after hearing about the possibly long wait, some of them at the end were asking more questions about international.
The only irritating thing about these parenting classes is that they are in the evening, and an hour away from home. So my goal of being in bed by 8PM every night is out the window. Last night we didn't get home until 10 and of course Brent and I were having a lively discussion so I didn't get to sleep until much later. *yawn* The soda machine is calling to me, I must go now.
We also had our house inspection, which was also very easy. I was afraid that this guy would be more particular than our mini-homestudy social worker, but he wasn't. He just looked in every room, told us to put the plate back on the side of the furnace and that was that. He didn't even comment on my awesome cleaning skills. :)
So now our part of the homestudy is finished - we just have to wait for the social worker to write it up and send it to us. He said he should be done with that in a week or two.
Then last night was our first parenting class, sort of. There is a new Wisconsin law that says that every new adoptive parent needs to take 16 hours of parenting classes, covering specific adoption topics. The law is so new, however, that our homestudy agency doesn't have a class formed yet. But their sister agency (not in our district) does have one. So instead of going to Milwaukee, we're going to Green Bay for our classes.
But, after all that, part of the training is an orientation class which our agency does have in place, so our social worker wanted us to take that class with him. So last night we went to Milwaukee. Whew - got all that?
Since it was just an orientation, everyone else there was only thinking about adoption, we were the only couple who was already halfway through the process. Our social worker even told us that the class would be all things we already knew and probably be boring, but we had to go anyway. He was right - it was kind of boring.
The class was about 2 hours long they talked about the history of the agency, what to expect in the homestudy, and then the difference between domestic and international adoption. I didn't really know much about Wisconsin domestic adoption so that part was interesting. I was disappointed that they didn't talk more about being open to older children. Not older as in school-aged, but even just toddlers. They pretty much only talked about domestic as adopting a newborn. Most of the families initially said they were interested in domestic, but after hearing about the possibly long wait, some of them at the end were asking more questions about international.
The only irritating thing about these parenting classes is that they are in the evening, and an hour away from home. So my goal of being in bed by 8PM every night is out the window. Last night we didn't get home until 10 and of course Brent and I were having a lively discussion so I didn't get to sleep until much later. *yawn* The soda machine is calling to me, I must go now.
Labels: Adoption
posted by Tracy at 4:55 AM
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