Well, this adoption awareness series is slowly puttering along and I’m back today with another question that I got asked: How long does the paperwork take?

 

In case you’ve missed it, here’s the series so far:

• how do you know if you’ve been called to adopt?
• how to get started
• how long does the paperwork take? (this post!)
• what if I don’t instantly love my adopted child?
• how to talk about adoption with your adoptive child

You can also checkout the whole adoption awareness series here.

 

 

HOW LONG DOES ADOPTION PAPERWORK TAKE?

 

Adoption paperwork is no joke, there’s a reason it’s been called “paper pregnancy”, the only problem is that there is no nine month expiry like there is with traditional pregnancy.

So, how long does adoption paperwork take?

Well, it really depends.

Generally you will be getting your home study done while you are gathering country-specific paperwork (criminal record checks, medical checks, etc) so that can improve your efficiency when it comes to paperwork.

Though, depending where you live you may not have someone available to complete your home study right away. I know that is often the case for one of the provinces here in Canada.

 

 

We started our paperwork by applying in November of 2011 with social services, applied to an agency in March 2012 and started our home study on April 4th. By May 17th we had completed our home study and the necessary paperwork. So, the bulk of our paperwork was done in about six weeks, but it was about six months from the start to finish.

But, if you know our adoption story at all though you’ll know it wasn’t quite that smooth. You can take a look at our adoption timeline here.

Another thing to take into consideration is that your paperwork may expire. We needed to update our home study, criminal record checks and our fingerprint checks a few times. This depends on the wait and the requirements from your agency, some may have different expiry dates for different pieces of paper.

All in all, the gathering of the paperwork was not very long or very hard. It was the waiting that was the hardest part (and being in limbo when we couldn’t find an agency/country). Hmm, maybe I should add a post to this very-slow-series about the waiting period . . .

Is there anything else adoption related you want me to share about this month?