- Choose an adoption agency. This was easy because we had such a good experience with our agency the first time that we did not hesitate to call them for Ana's adoption. We are using Carolina Adoption Services (CAS) out of Greensboro, NC. Precious people who we have never even met, yet helped make our family possible!
- Receive acceptance into the Russia program at Carolina Adoption Services. We submitted our application (see Post #1!) over a week ago and should receive approval any day now that CAS has accepted us into their program and will proceed in placing us with a child.
- Choose a social worker to conduct our home study. Often the home study is conducted by someone at the adoption agency, but in our case our agency is out of state so we needed a social worker who was in Texas. Again, EASY! Jenna with Adoption Answers, Inc. helped us with Mikhail's adoption as well as all the post-placement reports that Russia required several years after he was home. So glad to have you on board again, Jenna!
- Have a home study completed. Our licensed social worker (Jenna) comes to our house and does an interview with each of us, looks at our home environment to see if it is suitable for a child, and obtains copies of our personal information like legal documents, financial & insurance info, autobiographical details, etc. She talks with us about our marriage, our parenting style, and will talk with Mikhail, too, about his thoughts on having Ana here (he is looking forward to this very much!).
- Begin gathering documentation for the dossier. Ay yay yay... this is often a very frustrating part. At this point we will be following the Russian government's requirements for the necessary paperwork to be placed in our dossier. We will not be given a referral (info about a child) until this collection of paperwork is gathered, notarized, apostilled (another form of verifying a document's authenticity done by the State of Texas), and completed perfectly to their standards. The info in our dossier includes our completed home study, immigration forms, proof of our citizenship, approval from the US government to bring a child into the country, tons of info and documents from our agency, etc. One copy of this dossier will be sent to Russia as soon as it is completed and the second copy will be hand carried by us when we travel there. It is, in a strange but true way, the closest thing we have to Ana until we actually have her in our hands! This thick packet of hundreds of papers will represent countless hours spent in determination to bring home our child!
- Receive the referral! A referral is information (which sometimes includes a picture) of a child who is available for adoption in the country from which you are adopting. For the Russia program, it could take anywhere from 1 to 18 months to receive a referral once our dossier has been sent to the country. With Mikhail it took less than 2 months... the wait for girls is longer, though. :( The amount of info we will receive about our child (who will be renamed by us "Ana" on her adoption certificate) could vary from a few pictures or even video, plus medical and family history information to simply a name, age, and location. We received two pictures of Mikhail and limited developmental and medical info, just a few sentences, really. But one line on the referral sheet cracked us up, and we still smile and quote it to each other today: "...he is fond of small cars." :) Boy, did they get THAT right!
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| Mikhail's referral picture |
