Our 1st home study meeting went great! We met our social worker at her office in St. Cloud and spent 3 hours visiting with her. She is wonderful--positive, easy to talk to, and offered us lots of helpful insight. She is adopted, which is what prompted her to go into the profession. It was interesting to hear her story, she found out she was adopted when she was about 7.
She talked to us about the waiting list right away, it's much longer than it's been in a while--17 families are waiting to get into the profile book of 60 families. The families that we met during our training in April are approved and ready for adoption but, we are about 2 months behind due to our most recent miscarriage. She recommended doing some outreach, if we are able to be connected to a birth mother without going in the profile book, this could expedite the process and save us $5,000. But, it will be worth the wait!
She asked us lots of questions, but the meeting felt much more like a conversation than an interview. It was actually quite fun and easy, we talked to her about growing up, school, how we met and our favorite topic, Griffin. She asked some "deep" questions--how do we cope with grief and loss, what types of support systems do we have in place, how do we make decisions when we don't agree, etc.
The second part of our home study will be at our home, most likely a week from Friday (due to the state shutdown a course she was planning to teach is cancelled). She needs to see our home to make sure that we have room for another child and that it's safe. We have another section of questions to answer regarding our family life and it will be helpful to have Griffin involved in that piece. I can't wait to have her meet him!
We are excited for our next steps...thanks for the support and for joining us on this journey!
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