Four hours is a bit much for my husband, but we made it through all the questions, etc. Both the homestudy agency and the adoption agency wants the original reference forms ...but I think I convinced the homestudy agency to take copies. I asked about the CIS for I600 A, and the homestudy social worker said to file it, BUT Lina (adoption agent) says that it is the I800A form not 600 and that we should wait. I guess I am going with the 800, but at $670 I hope that is right!
We have our 2nd meeting on Nov. 2nd. In the meantime, we have to take 3 more online classes (nothing in person though), type up the answers to almost the same 15 questions the social worker asked us in the meeting, and get the medicals notarized.
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Our visit was about 8 hours, but the social worker only came to the house once. We did some follow up stuff over the phone. Step by step you're getting closer! I'd go with what Lina says about the I800A, she knows her stuff :-)
ReplyDeleteI believe the I600A is pre-Hague and the I800 is post-Hague. We filed ours three months before the Hague Convention went into affect.
ReplyDeleteI heard that the Hague Convention paperwork is far worse than before.
The online classes we took were useless. They addressed scenarios typical of adoption in China and Russia. For us, it was actually completely useless because our kids came from a Foster Family and not an Orphanage. The classes all assumed that the children come from an orphanage. I wish they addressed foster care as well, because we were clueless on how to take kids from a VERY priviliged family who gave them lots of love and attention.
i800 is indeed post-Hague. Because we let our i600 expire, we were "lucky" enough to get to do the i800 also.
ReplyDeleteI have heard that things are getting much better now with the i800 than they were before. We were one of the first families to fill it out here in the U.S. making it unreasonably slow to process. And only the second family in Poland to adopt under the new Hague Convention regulations (the first family was just a few weeks ahead of us) so our agency was worried about how our case would be handled. (All went pretty well in country actually.)
Glad to hear you are making progress!
I agree with the rest - it is the I800 now. The directions for filling out the I800 are as long as the application, but don't fret. It is fairly straight forward. I remember our Home Study visit.....Our home was so clean and sparkly! :) Congrats on moving forward!!
ReplyDeleteKeep trucking along! I know what you mean about those questions. We actually had to do two trainings, because what we did for our first agency wasn't apparently right for our home study agency. We did learn some helpful information. Certainly go with Lina! She is generally right on top of things and is very thorough!
ReplyDeleteI just noticed your running tally at the bottom. That is a fantastic idea. It will be so helpful for the families that follow us.
ReplyDeleteI still have lots of questions about how much it is going to cost to live in Poland for 2 months. It is hard to find a good guesstimate.