When does our precious child come home? Every country is different, so this is only regarding our process through China at this particular point in time. Our estimate is 12-18 months, but many factors can lengthen or shorten that span, so it is approximate. There are basically 5 stages:
HOMESTUDY - a social worker visiting your home, looking through every aspect of your life including your marriage, parental style, childhood and life experiences, finances, criminal history, etc. This process typically takes around 3 months.
IMMIGRATION - sending an application and copy of our homestudy to US customs and immigration to ask for permission to bring a child into the US for purposes of adopting that child. Once the application is mailed to approval is around 3 months.
DOSSIER - a packet of forms all about our life, with almost every single piece of paper requiring a type of authentication. Sort of like having each paper notarized, except it goes through a series of 4 authentications. These documents go to the county level (in Kentucky), the state, the US Department of State, and the China Embassy or Consulate. We will probably wait for our immigration approval in order to save mailing costs, so after immigration approval, 2 months is the estimate for the authentications. Then it goes to China! It takes 2 - 6 weeks for it to be logged into the system there.
REFERRAL - this is when you receive pictures and information on the child that has been matched with your family, or you get a referral for the child who you have requested to be matched with. These children are called "waiting children", because they may be older or have some type of special need that makes them harder to place. Right now, we are actually reviewing the file of a little boy with a special need. Should our family request to adopt him, we would receive his referral once we were approved as a match. I have the estimate as 5 - 12 weeks, with 8 weeks as the standard.
TRAVEL - once you have accepted your referral, travel would be somewhere around 4 months later!
This time our homestudy itself was super fast (2 weeks!) because we had a homestudy just a few years ago, and our social worker is rocket fast and super awesome (GO LYDIA)!!! But, we have one document that I requested on May 6th that has to be received to complete the homestudy. Even though the government agency that issues that document has a policy requiring it to be mailed by June 8th, I called yesterday and it could still be two more weeks. Once that single sheet of paper arrives, we are ready to roll! The homestudy will be complete, which means our paperwork to immigration can be mailed off (and believe me, the paperwork was filled out by yours truly a month ago :), and as soon as the immigration paperwork is processed, our dossier can be authenticated and mailed to China (again, our part finished already)!!
The immigration paperwork involves fingerprinting, so it takes at least 2 months for the application to be approved and the fingerprint appointment to be scheduled, fingerprinting to be completed, and preliminary approval to be received.
The dossier is almost a little comical, because it's like the forms get notarized, then someone certifies that notary is able to notarize, then someone certifies that the person who certified the notary is able to do so, etc. :) But it is what it is. Now that we have done all that we can do with gathering documents and filling out applications, we are pretty at peace with the process. I fully expect to have my moments of panic or impatience, but the good Lord will get us through! :)
Smiles!
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