Reaction and Action

On Tuesday, we learned of the SNA's reaction to our dossier. They considered our application quickly after receiving the letter of intent. There are three committees that review each dossier and can ask questions about legal, psychological, and social issues.

On the legal side, they asked for certain medical reports. Our attorney was able to show them that the reports were in the file, so there might have just been a translation issue. The attorney's staff do not translate every document from English to Spanish, only the main ones.

Based on the experience of other recent applicants, we expected to get some questions on the psychological report. Indeed, they asked for more information from the psychologist. Mostly, this is descriptive information about Chrissy and me, things like "level of self-esteem" and "capacity to deal with challenging situations." The previous report had stayed fairly technical, drawing on the formal assessments we filled out. The new details will be more about our parenting skills.

On the social (home study) side, there were two issues. First, the new administration at SNA has decided on additional tests for communicable diseases. We will all have to have a chest x-ray and have blood drawn again (that's three times since December for most of us, four times for Drew because the lab did the wrong test on his once). Also, there were two forms used to indicate which special needs we would consider. We didn't mark "no" on many things, but the more extensive form was simply summarized into the home study, while the shorter form was included as part of the dossier. Unfortunately, on the shorter form, we marked "no" on something that it turns out the committee thinks may be an issue for the children we are trying to adopt. We don't read it that way, and are not concerned about it, but will resubmit the form with "yes" marked. At this point, we don't expect this will require any changes to the home study itself or review by any US government agency.

Our goal is to get all these reports done and notarized next week, and back to Peru by about Oct. 18. If the next "consejo" for referrals isn't until later in the month, as is typical, we could still get the referral in October. Otherwise, we will have to put a hold on things until after next semester, which would be very disappointing. In fact, we don't know for sure what would happen if we have to tell SNA that we can't move ahead for a while.

There's one other step we've taken to try to avoid further delays. Since Andrew turned 18 after our initial application to the US Customs and Immigration Service, he now needs to be fingerprinted by Homeland Security. We sent in the form a week ago, and expect he will be notified of his appointment (in Indianapolis) by the end of the month. Thanks to the folks on the Yahoo! group Peru-Adopt for a heads-up on this step.