Defining Dalton

WE HAVE OFFICIALLY COMPLETED OUR HOME STUDY VISITS!!!

We have been so excited to walk through all of the steps of this process so far and we are learning more than we ever thought.

So far we have started working with our consultant agency, Christian Adoption Consultants(CAC), and have started working with an INCREDIBLE consultant who has been so helpful in walking us through everything. She and her husband also adopted their son with CAC! So cool right? Gaining knowledge from her personal experience has been something so helpful for us.

After we signed up with them we started the process of finding our home study agency. Most of them are similar but each agency has different nuances. We finally settled on working with Family Life Services and have been very blessed through the process. Things moved so smoothly and we could not have been happier with the way that everything went.

We have had a lot of people ask us what the process consisted of so here is a snapshot of what happened. The agency we worked with was in Lynchburg so we took a trip up there for our first two visits. Those visits were interviews where our case manager. She asked us question about how we met, what our childhood looked like, and how we plan to raise our child. This was an intense few days filled with lots of question but completely worth it. Our last visit was a few weeks later in our home. She came and checked things out like did we have a fire extinguisher, do we have smoke detectors, where do we keep our medicine and cleaning products. Most people do not know that all home studies are the same whether or not you are adopting privately or if you are becoming a foster parent so the checklists are the same no matter what age you are adopting.

Sooo what’s next?

We should be getting back our home study approval this week! Once that comes back we will be able to start working with adoption agencies where we will start to see cases and start being presented to birth parents. While we are waiting on that we are wrapping up our profile book that gets given to the adoption agencies to show potential birth parents.

We are so excited for the next steps. We will also be applying for grants so please be praying for us during all of that. Pray that the Lord provides more funding and that our book impacts families even if that may not result in a match with us.