In 2010 I was looking into adopting so I contacted my local DHS office for details.

Starting there, I went to various meetings one the next three Saturdays to learn about fostering, judge appointed representatives, and full scale adoption. At the end of those weeks I determined adoption was where I wanted to go.

I signed a huge amount of paperwork and released all of my rights for backgrounds to begin. I appeared at my local Department of Public safety and fed them all of my information so they could do a pretty extensive background search. I was impressed. That took three weeks but again it was very extensive.

Once that came back I was allow d to sign up for classes. These are again only of weekends and at various locations around town week to week. These included basic parenting classes, child psychology classes, classes on Reactive Attachment Disorder, and classes on finding and administering assistance if your child may need it. These classes lasted about a full year and have multiple levels.

After passing my classes, the home studies began. Multiple visits, questions in regards to past relationships more requests for information in regards to friends and family and even looked into places I rented in college. Checking into my employment ect.

After that I was assigned my own case worker. A great guy who spent weeks with me talking about the type of adoption that would be best suited. We determined a sibling group, between 5 and 10 so he began searching with other case workers.

They compiled a list and info book about 10 sibling groups. I read each carefully over another week or so then wanted to meet my kiddos. My worker set up the meeting.

We had four meetings with the kids and two “day trips” where it’s was just me and the kids going to zoos or parks and lunch then back to their worker. They were asked if I was someone they enjoyed being around and if they wanted to continue. Both agreed that they did so we did two weekends where they stayed with me.

After that we began the foster to adoption legal process. I fostered them for six months then was able to file for adoption. The courts met with the children separately and asked if they wanted to be adopted and if I wanted to adopt them. At that point I filed and a few weeks later officially adopted my kids.