Letters of recommendation. Yes, letters verifying that you have friends and acquaintance's who will attest that in their opinion you will make good parents. Wanting to keep our adoption a private matter is now out of the question, as we must ask our friends for letters of recommendation. Bear in mind these letters are not to come from family members. So with photo of baby 749 in hand, one by one we introduce our daughter to the people who we feel know us the best to evaluate us as parents. With each introduction we share our dream of adopting baby 749. (photo not posted here out of respect). We explain to our friends what we know about the process of International Adoption and where the journey has taken us so far. As we share our adoption news we fall deeper in love with baby 749. Many of our closest friends share in our joy and look forward to also sharing our journey, wanting updates as they become available. We decide to ask Christopher's 5th grade teacher to also write us a letter, as she has spent alot of time with Christopher and we believe, can evaluate our parenting skills through having Christopher as a student. We also want her to know that there is a big event happening in Christopher's life, should she see a change in his behavior. She is also very honored to be asked to help us adopt our daughter, and writes a letter that touches our hearts.
It is very humbling to ask friends to write a letter about you, and then heart warming to read what they have composed.
These letters become a permanent part of the home study which is a major part of your dossier. All forming the base for our daughters adoption story.
Next is onto copies of birth certificates, marriage certificates, last 3 years of tax returns, passports, police clearance letters, health insurance letters to prove an adoptive child will be covered and proof of employment letters.
Then it onto the long wait for the completed home study after the required home visit from our social worker. Anywhere from 6-12 weeks depending on the social worker. Obtaining these necessary documents is not difficult just time consuming when you really want to be on a plane to Kazakhstan yesterday.
So instead of stretch marks and frequency one can expect to be come expert at hurry up and wait.
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When we had to get our referral letters we did not get to read them. The social worker doing our home study had us ask people to mail them directly to him. It was implied to us that this was the standard practice. Of course in international adoption there in no one standard practice. Every agency, social worker, coordinator, country and even region within a country do things differently. Anyway, the idea was that if the letters went directly to the social worker and not through our hands they were more likely to be completely honest.
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