About a year ago, when we first began working with our agency, it seemed as though the “home study” was the holy grail, that once we got there, we were home free. Now, it is beginning to feel like the Sisyphus challenge.  The home study is the document that the children’s social worker uses to determine whether you are a good match for the children on their caseload.  Therefore, the more accurate and detailed the homestudy is, the better the match will be.

The initial interviews in June went well. We had two visits from a social worker who interviewed Jeff and I together and each of us separately.  Our tenant was scheduled to move out July 1st, and we we had been telling our friends that we expected to begin the matching process sometime in July. Our hopes were still high as everyone was telling us that writing the home study would not take long.

After the interviews, G- had written the first draft of the homestudy fairly quickly.  The most frustrating thing about the process has been that during our initial interviews, I wasn’t careful about some things that I said and they are still coming back to haunt me.  See my previous blog entry about this.

The last phase of the process is making edits to the first draft.  This is what has taken much longer than we expected.  There were several rounds of questions going from the director to the social worker to us. It seems as though every time we talk to someone at our agency, they are expecting it to be just a few days until the next step of our home study happens.

The real problem is that we had to call them each time there was a delay after a few times, our confidence has begun to wane that we made the right choice to go with this agency.  We realize that if we had gone directly through Alameda County we could have had kids in the home by now. On the other hand, we realize that the deliberateness of our process will more likely lead to a better match.  It turns out there was some staff turnover, which led to the delays and the poor communication.

The good news is that we are the last eyes that may edit the homestudy and it is in the mail today.  So hopefully, this anxious time is coming to a close and we WILL begin matching soon.