The Process

We were given this nice little graphic by someone from our agency and have been using it to track our overall progress. We also have it written on our chalkboard in our kitchen. It's super nice to see what next "big step" is coming/what's left. I showed it to a friend the other day and she said, "What? Only four checkmarks? I feel like y'all have done so much!" It's true. We have done a lot, but each of these check marks comes with LOTS of stuff to get them checked. I'm going to break down each step that we have completed or started and what it means and what we had to do to get there. It's a lot of info for one post, so I'll try to do a "part 2" later to break down the steps we have left.

HOME STUDY - 

  The home study is the first step in starting any adoption process. It consists of paperwork about our marriage, our families, our jobs, our finances, our house, our pet, several back ground checks, and pretty much everything you'd ever need/want to know about us. It is also the time to discuss what age, gender, special needs, etc you're open to and will determine which children you'll be approved for. We had a few visits from a social worker to our home where she made sure everything was safe, to interview us, and to talk about our expectations/areas for education about the adoption process and our future child. During this time, Cody and I also each had to complete 10 hours of adoption training on attachment, trauma, development, etc.  We began the home study process in early October 2018, had all our home visits in January 2019, and received our final report on May 13, 2019.

PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION-

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Cody and I went and did a visit with a licensed psychologist. She completed personality assessments, cognitive and learning disability assessments, and an in-person interview. She deemed that we were psychologically fit to parent a child. We completed our in-person visit on December 10, 2018 and received our final report on December 27, 2018.

DOSSIER- 

The dossier is the packet of information/forms that are sent to the country you're adopting from (so for us, India) for approval. It included everything from our home study, our psych eval, plus some additional back ground checks, financial statements, our passports, etc. Our dossier was submitted to CARA (the adoption authority in India) on May 22, 2019. 

I800-A APPROVAL-

This is the pre-approval from The Department of Homeland Security/US Citizenship and Immigration that approves us to adopt a child from another country and bring them to live/be citizens in the US. We submitted an application that included our home study and had an appointment at the USCIS office for fingerprinting. We submitted our application May 30, 2019, had our fingerprinting on June 26, 2019 and received approval on July 2, 2019.

CARA APPROVAL- 

CARA stands for Central Adoption Resource Authority and is the part of the Indian government that regulates adoptions in India. After we are approved by CARA, we will then be eligible to be matched with a child. We submitted our dossier for approval on May 22, 2019.

Here is our handy (big) binder that holds all these documents I just told you about!

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So this is everything so far! Please continue to pray that we will be approved by CARA soon.