I have written a lot about how to choose an adoption agency and there is a lot of attention given to the topic of choosing the agency that will process your adoption because choosing the right agency to handle your adoption is essential and vital to your adoption experience.

However I think that discussing how to specifically choose the agency that will do your homestudy, is often overlooked.

I wrote about starting your homestudy in this post, and I wrote about what a homestudy is in this post. Today I am going to talk about how to find just the right agency to do your adoption homestudy.

My first tip is to call lots of agencies so you can compare.

Remember that you are hiring someone to do a service for you. You will certainly be paying for your homestudy, and you are not asking someone to do you a favor in any way. Shop around.

The second thing to remember is that a social worker that you can have a good relationship with can be invaluable. The social worker should be able to help you decide the right age/gender/race of child for your family, and help you evaluate your readiness for a transracial adoption and/or an older child adoption and/or a special needs adoption.

A good social worker will be your advocate and will be someone that can answer your questions and provide you with resources both before and after your child comes home.

Remember that since most adoption programs have some sort of post placement requirements, you will continue to work with your social worker even after your child is home.

A good social worker/homestudy agency can make the process feel easy and stress-free (or as much so as possible). Things can be handled quickly and efficiently and your adoption can move right along.

On the other hand, a less than good social worker/homestudy agency can be the source of great frustration and significant delays in your adoption.

Here are some questions to ask and information to get when you are choosing a homestudy agency.

- What do they charge for the homestudy and for post placement visits?

- In what timeframe can they complete the homestudy?

- Do they have experience writing domestic or international homestudies?

- Do they have any policies against adopting out of birth order, transracial
adoption or any other “special circumstances” that your family or adoption might involve? For example, if you were planning on adopting an HIV+ child, you would want to know before you paid any money and started the process, that the agency would be supportive of this decision and would not have any problems with approving you to adopt an HIV+ child.

- Does the social worker work full time? This may seem like an odd question, but one of our social workers had a totally different full-time job, a busy family and then did homestudies “on the side”. Our homestudy was NOT done in a timely manner. You want a social worker who can make you a priority.

It is also important to get references. Most adoptive parents know to check references for the agency they choose to process their adoption, but many parents do not get references for the homestudy agency that they choose.

You want to know if other adoptive parents have had their homestudies done quickly and if they have been happy with the agency or if there were problems.

Here is a summary of my advice in choosing an agency to do your homestudy.

- Shop around.

- Find someone you feel comfortable talking to and can have a good relationship with.

- Ask lots of questions.

- Get references.


Here are some more resources on homestudies.

The homestudy category on the Hoping to Adopt Blog

Find adoption professionals in your state on Adopting.com.