Taking steps towards adopting a child can be very time-consuming and full of to-do items. At Blossoming Minds Psychological Services PC we offer pre-adoption evaluations that are quick, supportive, and highly professional. We strive to work with you and your adoption agency to provide a high quality, detailed description of your personality traits, prospective parenting abilities, and personal history in order to help you complete the psychological evaluation task of the adoption process.
The purpose of receiving a pre-adoption evaluation is to help your adopting country better understand you as a well-rounded person. They want to be sure that a prospective parent is psychologically stable, confident, trustworthy, self-aware, and a good fit for raising a child.
The entire evaluation process can take about 3 to 4 hours for adults. The process starts with a structured intake interview where we will talk more about your childhood, school years, work years, friendships, relationships, and general life experiences to learn more about what makes you who you are. We are listening for examples of relationship patterns, ways that you cope with stressors, role models you had for parenting, ways you manage unexpected life events, and your plans for adoption. Then, we will proceed with testing on the same day. Testing typically takes about two hours and the tests we use are based on the requirements for your country. The majority of countries require a personality measure, a standardized measure of parenting skills, and measures focused on ruling out potential psychopathology.
Our assessors are highly skilled and well-trained in administering and interpreting the tests required by the majority of countries that people have adopted from. During testing you will be allowed to take breaks as needed.
After all testing is completed, it takes about 1 to 2 business days for your assessor to write a formal report explaining all of the findings and summarizing your background information using the guidelines from the country you plan to adopt from; this information will be provided to you by your contracted adoption agency.
The final report is then reviewed with you and your adoption agency team to answer any questions you may have, to be sure all information is fully accurate and explained in a way that will translate well if needed for other countries’ languages, and to provide guidance about next steps. A determination will be made in the report about whether or not you would be recommended to proceed with adopting a child.
Many families would like to better understand the findings of the testing aside from the recommendation made, and this can be done as a post-evaluation follow-up meeting where we can explore ways that your personality traits and psychology can be supported and improved.
At Blossoming Minds Psychological Services PC, we aim to support all parents with the major task of parenting and are always happy to provide resources and referrals as needed after an evaluation!
