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I am so excited to share that I have completed a huge step in the home study process... I've finished the house visit portion!
I am so excited to share that I have completed a huge step in the home study process... I've finished the house visit portion!
What is a home study?
If you don't remember, a home study is something that all adoptive parents need. It consists of a bunch of paperwork, interviews, and visiting the house to see where the child(ren) will live. Hopeful adoptive parents need to be thoroughly vetted to ensure that they're able to provide a stable environment in which to raise a child and that they can support the child, financially, physically, and emotionally.
Past steps
I started my home study quite a while ago... it actually should have been done by now, but unfortunately the Coronavirus pandemic held things up. However, all of my paperwork was completed months ago and in May, I was able to complete the interview portion of the home study via video chat.
The house visit
So this week, I was finally able to have the house visit portion. This meant that Amy, the woman who runs Connecting Hearts who is completing my home study, was able to come to my house to get a tour. She had to see that I lived in a safe area, that I had enough room for a baby, and that my living situation was generally good all around. Having Amy come to the house had been postponed a couple of times, just due to the fact that it wasn't safe to have anyone over during this pandemic, but she was able to come and wear a mask the entire time so we could finally complete this step.
Amy also had to talk to my entire family. Since I live at home, and plan on continuing to live at home when I'm raising my own children, she had to speak with each of my siblings and my parents. Now, I wasn't able to be in the room when she spoke to them, but generally what she was doing was getting a sense of how they felt about the adoption, what they thought of me becoming a mother, and so on. She spoke with my parents first, then spoke with all four of my siblings who live in the home together, and it went very well. When she finished with everyone else and I had the chance to sit and chat with her for a bit, she said that everyone had great things to say about me and that she had everything that she needed for me to move forward.
Now what?
Alright, so now it sounds like I've done a whole lot, right? Right! Almost everything is finished. In fact, Amy gave me the go-ahead after my interview to start sharing my profile website and social media pages in hopes of eventually connecting with expecting parents who were choosing adoption for their baby. It seemed that I had done everything needed to pass the home study, so might as well get started. At the end of her visit with us on Monday, Amy said that she pretty much had the whole home study typed up for me, but we're just missing a key piece that's preventing us from moving forward: employment verification.
Really? Employment verification? That's what's holding you up?
I know that's what you're thinking... I've been working at Disney for four and a half years!! How is employment verification holding up this process? Here's the thing though: I'm in limbo. I've been on furlough since April after Disney closed down in March due to the pandemic. There's no way to verify my employment while I'm on furlough. So I'm kind of just stuck right now until I get called back to work. Even though Disney has been reopen for a couple of weeks and tons of people have already returned to work, I'm not one of those people. So I'm honestly just sitting and waiting until I get called back to work before I can finish this home study. It's just that and fingerprinting that still needs to be done, and I need to time the fingerprinting so it's finished at the same time as the home study finalization (since they're both good for a year). Once I get called back to work, we can complete the fingerprinting process and finally finish this whole thing!
And finally...
I'll end with one last thing related to the adoption process. I'm fundraising. Adoption is a lot of money upfront, and being able to afford adoption is quite different than being able to support a child over the course of their lifetime. So I'm doing my best to raise as much money as possible to help with this process. So I came up with an awesome idea to help raise a little bit of money while I'm stuck at home during this pandemic... a virtual vendor sale.
You've all heard of vendor sales, right? Also called craft fairs, you can usually find these around the holidays, when small businesses are set up under tents somewhere all set up for one-stop shopping. I've participated in quite a few of these, not just during the holiday season, with my small business, The Write Creations. So I figured, why not host a virtual vendor sale? I've teamed up with forty vendors from across the United States to hold this sale online. We've all showcased our products in photo albums for customers to browse through over the course of the last week of July. The sale starts on Sunday, July 26th, and runs through Saturday, August 1st. You can find the sale right on Facebook by following the link to Shop to Support! We're extremely excited about this event and can't wait to see how it turns out.
If you don't remember, a home study is something that all adoptive parents need. It consists of a bunch of paperwork, interviews, and visiting the house to see where the child(ren) will live. Hopeful adoptive parents need to be thoroughly vetted to ensure that they're able to provide a stable environment in which to raise a child and that they can support the child, financially, physically, and emotionally.
Past steps
I started my home study quite a while ago... it actually should have been done by now, but unfortunately the Coronavirus pandemic held things up. However, all of my paperwork was completed months ago and in May, I was able to complete the interview portion of the home study via video chat.
The house visit
So this week, I was finally able to have the house visit portion. This meant that Amy, the woman who runs Connecting Hearts who is completing my home study, was able to come to my house to get a tour. She had to see that I lived in a safe area, that I had enough room for a baby, and that my living situation was generally good all around. Having Amy come to the house had been postponed a couple of times, just due to the fact that it wasn't safe to have anyone over during this pandemic, but she was able to come and wear a mask the entire time so we could finally complete this step.
Amy also had to talk to my entire family. Since I live at home, and plan on continuing to live at home when I'm raising my own children, she had to speak with each of my siblings and my parents. Now, I wasn't able to be in the room when she spoke to them, but generally what she was doing was getting a sense of how they felt about the adoption, what they thought of me becoming a mother, and so on. She spoke with my parents first, then spoke with all four of my siblings who live in the home together, and it went very well. When she finished with everyone else and I had the chance to sit and chat with her for a bit, she said that everyone had great things to say about me and that she had everything that she needed for me to move forward.
Now what?
Alright, so now it sounds like I've done a whole lot, right? Right! Almost everything is finished. In fact, Amy gave me the go-ahead after my interview to start sharing my profile website and social media pages in hopes of eventually connecting with expecting parents who were choosing adoption for their baby. It seemed that I had done everything needed to pass the home study, so might as well get started. At the end of her visit with us on Monday, Amy said that she pretty much had the whole home study typed up for me, but we're just missing a key piece that's preventing us from moving forward: employment verification.
Really? Employment verification? That's what's holding you up?
I know that's what you're thinking... I've been working at Disney for four and a half years!! How is employment verification holding up this process? Here's the thing though: I'm in limbo. I've been on furlough since April after Disney closed down in March due to the pandemic. There's no way to verify my employment while I'm on furlough. So I'm kind of just stuck right now until I get called back to work. Even though Disney has been reopen for a couple of weeks and tons of people have already returned to work, I'm not one of those people. So I'm honestly just sitting and waiting until I get called back to work before I can finish this home study. It's just that and fingerprinting that still needs to be done, and I need to time the fingerprinting so it's finished at the same time as the home study finalization (since they're both good for a year). Once I get called back to work, we can complete the fingerprinting process and finally finish this whole thing!
And finally...
I'll end with one last thing related to the adoption process. I'm fundraising. Adoption is a lot of money upfront, and being able to afford adoption is quite different than being able to support a child over the course of their lifetime. So I'm doing my best to raise as much money as possible to help with this process. So I came up with an awesome idea to help raise a little bit of money while I'm stuck at home during this pandemic... a virtual vendor sale.
You've all heard of vendor sales, right? Also called craft fairs, you can usually find these around the holidays, when small businesses are set up under tents somewhere all set up for one-stop shopping. I've participated in quite a few of these, not just during the holiday season, with my small business, The Write Creations. So I figured, why not host a virtual vendor sale? I've teamed up with forty vendors from across the United States to hold this sale online. We've all showcased our products in photo albums for customers to browse through over the course of the last week of July. The sale starts on Sunday, July 26th, and runs through Saturday, August 1st. You can find the sale right on Facebook by following the link to Shop to Support! We're extremely excited about this event and can't wait to see how it turns out.
I hope that you'll consider viewing all of the products being sold during this event. The majority of the vendors are hopeful adoptive parents who are fundraising just like me, so it's a worthy event to support.
Thanks for reading!
- Taylor
Thanks for reading!
- Taylor
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