I have received several emails asking me to share more about the Family Book we made when we were selected to go to committee for our children. Families who choose to have their home study approved for placement of waiting children who are legally free or have a case place for adoption may be selected by several different methods depending on the state and county the adoptive parents live in. In our state families who choose to have a child or sibling group placed as ’pre-adoptive’ or straight adoption placements are selected by the child’s caseworker and then approved by a committee process. Generally, three families for placement are considered by the committee. In addition to the Home Study families are often requested to provide a Family Book.
We were selected to go to committee for our children who were almost one-year and five-years-old. I had put the Family Book off and found it was the last thing we had to get done in order to be ready for the committee meeting. I am not the artistic type when it comes to scrapbooks and we didn’t have photo’s running out of our ears. At first I had no idea how much to include in the family book. But, knowing that both the committee members and our future children would be reviewing the book I wanted to do the best job I possibly could. I was very challenged to say the least.
I started thinking of every possible Idea I could come up with and then I thought about adapting a well known children’s nursery rhyme or story might be cute and at least give me something to work with. I found I really loved the rhyme “This is The House That Jake Built” With a copy of the original story I re-wrote it and made the story “This is The House Where Your Forever Family Lives”. I decided to keep the focus on Our Home, the people inside of it and use simple pictures.
This is the text and pictures we used:
- Page 1) This is the House Where Your Forever Family Lives (Picture of the outside of our house.
- Page 2) This is your room inside of the house where your forever family lives. (Picture of their bedrooms).
- Page 3) These are the cats, that play in your room, inside of the house where your forever family lives. (Pictures of the Cats!)
- Page 4) This is your sister with hair so long, who feeds the cats that play in your room inside of the house where your forever family lives. (Picture of Big Sister Tori).
- Page 5) This is your brother all tall and grown, who helps your sister with hair so long, who feeds the cats that play in your room, inside of the house where your forever family lives. (Picture of Big Brother Sean).
- Page 6) This is your daddy so wise and strong who drives, your brother all tall and grown, who helps your sister with hair so long, who feeds the cats that play in your room, inside the house where your forever family lives. (Picture of Daddy getting into his truck).
- Page 7) This is your mommy who sings a song when making cookies for your daddy so wise and strong, who drives your brother all tall and grown, who helps your sister with hair so long, who feeds the cats that play in your room, inside of the house where your forever family lives. (Picture of Mommy making cookies).
We also included a few “candid” photo pages and some of the special pictures we had of our family. Our Family Book was very simple yet very clear we were forever. We were told the committee enjoyed our book and Makala and Jeremiah still ask to look at it often three years later.
Special Needs and Adoption-Related Terms:
A | B | C | D | E-F | G-H-I | J-K-L | M | N-O | P | Q-R | S | T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z
For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.