My family has celebrated a year together as an adoptive family this past weekend. Things are starting to feel normal and we are just one regular family. My daughter asked me, are we going to have any more children? I said with a chuckle “We”, but I knew what she meant. I told her that her dad and I have planned on adopting another child from foster care just like her. We told her that we would like to adopt a boy no older than the age of eight. So this week I decided that I will call the agency that I worked with to see what the next steps were. After speaking with them I found out my husband and I will need to do a new homestudy, and it is pretty much like starting all over again.
I am in the state of Georgia and Georgia requires that we do 15 hours of training each year and those will need to be done before we can adopt. The previous years it was only 10 hours that were required by both me and my husband. Georgia has also now decided that if you are adopting a child that is under the age of eight you will need to pay for your homestudy. If you are adopting a child between the ages of 8 to 18, you will not get charge for your homestudy. The cost of the homestudy is $1800 and application fee of $200 so the total cost would be $2000. Now I know of course, if you are doing a domestic adoption you would have to pay way more than this, so I shouldn’t complain.
I guess I just got spoiled from the last adoption with my daughter through foster care. The only thing that we came out of pocket for was our doctor’s exams and our drug testing then everything else was covered. The reasons that I chose to adopt from foster care were that we wanted to help a child in need and also it was cost effective. I am not saying that because of the costs I’m not going to adopt from foster care, but I do feel as though they could still help. I know for most people it would be hard to come up with $2000 and I don’t believe I mentioned the $400 fee to update your study each year. Some families don’t have a lot of money, but do have a lot a love.
Our plan was to start our paperwork the beginning of the year so that gives me time to save up the money for the homestudy and the application fee or at least I hope. I am glad that I decided to check into this now because this would’ve delayed us when we started the process. So for now, we are still excited about adopting a little boy from foster care and my daughter is excited about having a sibling. We will stick with the course ahead of us but let’s just hoped that there is no fee change for 2014!