Home Safety Visit done!

The dreaded Home Safety Visit was completed yesterday afternoon.  The process is kind of a homestudy-lite.  Since hosting does not involve adoption, a full-blown homestudy is not necessary, but a home safety visit is needed.  Does that mean I cleaned any less?  No way! 

We're not hosting a toddler, but we now have outlet plugs everywhere. Cabinet locks in every bathroom, laundry cabinets and under the kitchen sink? Check. Medicines secured? Check. Fire extinquishers on every level of the house. Cleaning supplies to upper shelves. Moved our dusty bottles of alcohol to upper shelves. Smelly dog off to the groomers. Rearranged closet to create space for "S". Rearranged the pantry. Cleaned the refrigerator. Ok, I stopped myself at cleaning the baseboards. No sense in going overboard.

Now I don't know how much of that prep work was taken in by our social worker when she stepped into our house with the smell of lemon oil, Pledge and wet Swiffer still hanging in the air. What I will tell you is what she needed from us during her 1 1/2 hour long visit. She wanted all of our family members' pertinent information including health, dates of birth, education, etc. already written down so she would have it for future reference. This also saved her time with notetaking. I made copies of our animals' rabies certificates and the kids' immunization records. I gave her our pediatrician, dentist, veterinarian, and primary care doctor contact information.  Our criminal history checks had arrived in the mail the day before and I made copies of those for her (obviously free and clear of any criminal history for both of us!).  She talked with us about what we expected from the hosting experience and what we planned to do with "S" during the weeks he'd be with us.  The kids sat in for all of our discussions.  She spoke with each one of them regarding what their interests are and how they feel about "S" coming to visit.

We walked around the house showing the social worker the children's rooms, master bedroom, playroom/family room, porch and backyard.  She didn't inspect the fence board by board, didn't test the bookshelves for wall brackets or demand a white glove inspection of our bathrooms. Financial records were not discussed, nor were fire escape plans reviewed.  What she was looking for, I think, is the "family feel" of our home and neighborhood. Our social worker was from an adoption agency and although this wasn't a home study per se, it was similar in some aspects. I've always thought adoption social workers have a good deal going for them.  They get to work with families who want a child or children added to their home and who get a chance to prepare for their visits.  So often in some circles of our society social workers are looked upon as the boogey man coming to find fault and reasons to remove children from homes.

Now that the home visit is completed she takes all of her experiences with us as a family and writes a report to be submitted with our hosting paperwork. Because this is not a full homestudy, the one visit is all it took for the home safety visit to be completed.  FYI, fees vary from agency to agency for homestudies, and our home safety visit was only a fraction of the cost of a full homestudy.