What is in a dossier?

 I realized that I never listed what needs to be included in our dossier.  I wanted to do this along with the picture of our dossier that I posted earlier, for some reason I didn't.  I'm sure I left things out, but this is what I can remember off the top of my head:

1. Birth certificates
2. Marriage certificate
3. Bank statements
4. Passport copies
5. Medical forms w/labs
6. Consulate letter of endorsement
7. Power of Attorney for our agency's lawyer to act on our behalf when presenting our dossier to IHNFA
8. Two sets of 20 pictures (home, family, pets, family activities)
9. 2 Passport sized photos
10. 2 IHNFA applications, one in English and one in Spanish
11. Homemaker letter
12. Employee letter
13. Psychological evaluations
14. State criminal clearance letters
15. FBI criminal clearance letters
16. 3 reference letters
17. Homestudy
18. USCIS approval letter
19. Deed to our home
20. Post placement letter


This packet of papers was probably 1.5" thick, at least. The country of Honduras is going to know our family better than we know ourselves! It took us six months collect all this information.  We probably would have had it done in 4-5 months if our homestudy agency hadn't taken FOREVER to finalize our homestudy.  I won't be recommending them to anyone!  The important thing now is that it's done and in Honduras!

It's there!!!!

Our dossier has been delivered....it is now in Honduras!!!! 

We started this adoption journey 7 months ago, and have been working on our dossier for 6 months and we are FINALLY at this point!! 

It will now be translated into Spanish and reviewed, which our agency said should take about 4 weeks.  Then, IHNFA will receive it and either approve the dossier or request additional information.  We already know that they are going to want a new psych eval from us with the updated requirements.  This time they want one page on each of us with our MMPI-2 results, and another page strictly on our personalities, again one page for each of us.  Things that need to be included are our likes/dislikes, how we view ourselves, our roles in our marriage, how we deal with stress and grief, what activities do we do with Evan, family traditions and childhood memories.  Our psychologist had Dave and I each write one page in response to these sections and we brought them to our meeting.

We met with our psychologist today so that he can do these updates.  He said that the MMPI-2 is pretty much used for clinical reasons....to identify psychological issues, etc and is NOT a personality test.  There is a little paragraph in the report on our personalities, but it's not enough for what IHNFA wants.  So, he gave us another test to take which is more personality based.  It is called the MCMI-III ('Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III').  It was a 175 true/false questionnaire that asked the same kind of questions over and over but in different ways.  Our psychologist thinks that with this test, his observations of us, and the responses that we wrote out for him, that will give an excellent picture of our personalities, and hopefully satisfy IHNFA.  He needs to wait for our tests to be scored and results dictated before he can write up the evaluation.  He said that he should have everything complete within two weeks.  I will then have Beth review it, make any changes that she requests, then have it notarized and apostilled so it's ready to go immediately.

There is some news coming out of Honduras that may or may not be good in regards to adoptions, and it has people on edge right now.  IHNFA, which is essentially Social Services oversees adoptions.  Due to some issues, the Secretary General, who signs off on adoptions has been fired.  I guess they have replacements right now, but who knows what that means.  If I understand correctly, there will be a 90 day evaluation/restructuring of IHNFA.  Could this slow or stop adoptions for 90 days?  Or more?  Or not be affected at all?  No one knows anything, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that everything is taken care of and fixed quickly.  I know there are a few families in Honduras right now waiting to finalize their adoptions.  I really hope that this doesn't affect their adoptions!

Dossier is on its way!!!

I just got word from Beth that our dossier is on its way to Honduras right now!!!  It has to go through customs so hopefully it will be in their hands very soon!! It's crazy to think that we are finally at this point.  It seemed so impossible seven months ago when I was just beginning to realize all the paperwork that had to be done....it seemed like it was neverending!  But here we are!

Our dossier would have been mailed to Honduras on Friday when Gladney received it, but Beth called to inform me that Dave's birth certificate wasn't included!!  I freaked because I obviously thought it was there.  After practically tearing the kitchen apart, I remembered we had put it in our scanner because we needed to make a copy of the apostille and send it to Kate.  So, thankfully, that's where it was!! I dropped the birth certificate off at Fedex on Friday, but it didn't get delivered until today.  I can't describe the panic I experienced when I got that call from Beth!

What will happen now is that it will take 4 weeks to get our dossier translated and presented to the ministry of foreign affairs where they check the apostilles.  After that, it will be presented to IHNFA, and at this point we will be getting requests for additional information, or clarifications on documents.

With that said, the paperwork is not complete.  We already know that our psych evals will be kicked back to us, with who knows what else.  We shall see, hopefully that will be the only thing!

Just stuff

I wrote earlier about how Dave's birth certificate arrived with water damage.  The UPS delivery guy had shoved the envelope in the doorjam and it was pouring rain out, and he didn't put it in a plastic bag for whatever reason.  Dave called UPS to complain and let them know that an important international document had been damage due to their driver.  He reached some guy in India, who said his name was Ivan....sure it is.  Anyway, they haven't been of much help and didn't seem to care about the issue at all.

I took photos of the damage and sent them to Beth and Kate to get their opinion on if we could still use this birth certificate.  Beth said that since the damage isn't into the ink too much, it should be fine but wants us to get another one just in case Honduras doesn't like it.  Getting Dave's birth certificate is a bit of a process since it is an international one, and it costs $50 to get, and it will take several weeks for us to receive it from the Department of State and then it will have to be apostilled.  Thankfully, that part is a quick process.  So, thanks UPS! (insert frowny face)

I received email notification today from Fedex that our dossier has arrived at Gladney.  Now I am waiting to hear from them in regards to sending it to Honduras.  Since this is Friday, hopefully it will go out on Monday!  I want them to email me now, because I want to know!

One other thing.  The psych eval format and requirements have changed for the third time...of course right before our paperwork is due to go to Honduras!  Gladney said that they will send the entire dossier down to start the translation process and we are to start working with our psychologist to get it rewritten and the new things added.  This way, the updated eval will be ready to go when Honduras requests it.  A total of 4 new pages must be written, two on each of us that get really in depth about our personality characteristics.  This will bring our entire psych eval to NINE pages!  My friend adopting from Russia just needed one page briefly describing them and their MMPI results.  And here we are, needing nine pages of seriously in depth stuff.  Oh well, if that's what Honduras wants, that is what they will get.

Consulate letter!!!!

We have our Consulate letter!!  Our dossier is now officially complete!   I shipped it via Fedex to Gladney this morning, so there is nothing left for us to do but wait.  We expect everything to be in Honduras next week!

I want to share our experience in hopes this might help someone else, especially since we were the first Gladney family and as far as I know, the only one in the adoption process who has been to the New York Consulate.  I know I enjoyed reading the details of other family experiences.

We live in Maine, which is about 6-7 hours from New York City so it's not exactly close so it required some planning and help from our parents.  Thank goodness for them!!

My mother-in-law, Andrea said that she'd stay overnight on Monday and take care of Evan so that we could start the drive once Dave got out of work, so she got to our house and we left at 5:30PM.  My mom took over for Andrea on Tuesday morning and took him to daycare/preschool for the morning. Our plan was to drive as far as we could towards New Haven, CT Monday night and take the train into NYC on Tuesday morning. We managed to get all the way there and checked into the Omni Hotel at Yale around 9:30PM.

We decided to take Amtrak from New Haven into Penn Station and that was scheduled to leave at 7:38AM and arrive in NYC at 9:20.  Well, we were delayed 40 minutes because the engine in our train had to be changed, and then the replacement didn't work so finally after 3 engines, we were on our way!  We arrived at Penn Station a little after 10:00.   As we were waiting for the train to get a working engine, all I could think was that we were wasting precious time and hoping that this was not a sign of things to come at the Consulate.  We only had this one day to get the letter because Dave had to work the next day in Maine.  Our agency said that they've heard of families waiting anywhere from 1-5 hours to get their letter at various other Consulates.  Since we were the first family in New York we had no idea what to expect!  The Consulate is very close to Penn Station, maybe a 10 minute walk, if that, so I recommend to anyone needing to go to the NYC Consulate to take a train into there.  Because we had no idea what to expect, we stopped at a store on the way to the Consulate to stock up on snacks in case we had a very long wait.  We arrived at the Consulate at 10:30AM.  I had planned to be at the Consulate earlier because we had no idea what to expect when we walked in there so I wanted to get there as early as possible. 

The entrance to the Consulate is marked with the Consulate seal on the window, and a Honduran flag awning over the door.  Once inside, we were greeted and we told him what we were there for.  He gave us a number (5) and had us take a seat in the waiting area.  It had several short rows of blue chairs, a large Honduran flag on the wall and a large flat-screen TV that played what seemed to be vacation spots in Honduras.

We waited for half an hour until our number was called.  We were brought out back and up the stairs and into a small office.  The gentleman was very nice and said that he was familiar with the letter so that was a huge relief!  We gave him our dossier and he asked if everything had been "legalized" and gave our paperwork a quick look.  He used our passports to type our names into the letter, printed it out, stamped and signed it and the letter was done!  It took all of 10 minutes!  I did ask for two letters, in case something happened to one of them I wanted a back-up.  He charged us $20 and requested it in cash.

After leaving the Consulate, we walked around Times Square which was fun.  I got my picture taken with a random Mickey Mouse character walking around, which was dressed up like Uncle Sam.  Gotta love New York City!  We bought a few small things for Evan, a New York license plate with his name on it, a toy double-decker bus and a toy taxi cab car.

Once we left the Consulate, I glanced through the letter and thought it was good.  For some reason I wanted to see the letter again, and it was then I realized that our agency name was not in the letter!!!  We rushed back to the Consulate, told the man that greeted us the situation.  He had us sit down to wait for gentleman to get back from lunch, which was only 10 minutes.  Once back in his office, he changed the letter to include the agency name, and then we were done.  For sure this time!  At this point we decided to head back to Penn Station and get a train back to New Haven.  We took the 2:00 train, arrived there about 3:30ish and headed home.  We walked through the door at 8:30PM Tuesday evening!

The Consulate office was clean and everyone seemed nice.  Most people there were doing paperwork for passports, visas, etc.  Needless to say, we stuck out.  :-)  I'm sure they were all wondering what we were doing there. It's such a relief to have our dossier completed!  Now we're curious to see what else Honduras will ask for.

Plans for our Consulate trip

Due to Dave's work schedule, we will be going to New York City this coming Tuesday, September 13th, which also Dave's birthday.  This trip will involve the generous help of our parents because we would prefer not to bring Evan with us.  Dave's mother, Andrea will be spending Monday night at our house, and we'll start driving that evening and then stop in along the way to sleep.  On Tuesday morning, Andrea leaves for work at 7AM so then my mother will take over care for Evan at that time.  She will drop Evan off and pick him up at his daycare/school from 7: 30-12:30.  Then she will stay with him until we get home.  We aren't sure what time we'll be home Tuesday night, but it will probably be pretty late.  It really stinks to have to do this trip so quickly, but it's just the way it is.

I am nervous about the visit to the Consulate because we will be the first Gladney family at the NYC one and we don't know if anyone from other agencies have already been.  So, we have no idea if the people in the office will know what we are talking about and if they will give us a hard time about it.  I can't reach anyone there so we don't even know if anyone will be there!  We could drive 6 hours and show up to a closed office.  To be honest, I don't see why Gladney can't provide all the information they gave me to the Consulate themselves to get these letters for their adoptive families.  Why is it different if we bring the info needed, or the agency provides it to them?  We just have to play the game with this I guess.

DOSSIER IS COMPLETE!

 Wow.  Today has been a mix of emotions! 

We received Dave's correctly apostilled birth certificate - GOOD. 

UPS did not put the envelope in a plastic bag and it's raining.  So birth certificate has water damage!! - BAD

Kate and Beth said that because the damage doesn't affect the print, the translators should not have a problem with it.  -GOOD.  We will be requesting additional certified copies in case IHNFA won't accept it.

We received our completed dossier today!!!!!  - AWESOME!

It is so exciting to have our dossier completed after 6 months of working on it!  We plan on heading to the Honduran Consulate in New York City on Monday or Tuesday this coming week!  Once our dossier has been translated, it will be interesting to see what other paperwork is requested.  Hopefully it won't be anything too bad, and not much!

I feel like I can breathe now....for a few weeks anyway! 

ALMOST done!

I heard from Gladney today and Beth has our entire dossier, except for one document!!  She is Fedexing the dossier to us so we will have it very shortly!  There was a hiccup getting Dave's birth certificate apostilled.  Due to the fact that his is international (from Panama), it had to go to the Department of State in Washington, DC instead of the Secretary of State in Maine like all the other documents.  I was so excited because we received his apostilled birth certificate from the Dept of State today!  I emailed a copy to Kate so she could review it.  She called me later and told me that they had made a mistake!  The name of the person who originally signed the birth certificate is the name that should have been on the apostille paperwork, but they wrote in the wrong name!!  So, Kate and I scrambled to get everything straightened out so that we could overnight a new request letter to the Dept of State.  I managed to get the package in a Fedex dropbox with 5 minutes to spare, so they will receive it tomorrow.  If everything goes smoothly, we should have the correct paperwork in our hands on Thursday.  Then we will have our completed....yes, COMPLETED dossier ready to go to the Consulate!

We are tentatively planning on heading to New York City early next week, either Monday or Tuesday.  NYC is the closest Honduran Consulate for us.  It is about a 6 hour drive for us so it's going to be a whirlwind trip!  It is exciting and unbelievable (in a good way!) that our dossier could be in Honduras in the next few weeks! 

I have to say that we are so glad that we hired Kate to help us with our dossier!  Kate has been wonderful and has helped us in so many ways that we would have had no idea about, or would have had to research ourselves and hope that we did things correctly.  She's really taken a lot of the stress out of things for me.  I say "me" because I've done all the paperwork for the adoption, and Dave signs what he needs to.  I stay at home with Evan so it works out well, plus I want to be in control of the dossier...it would drive me crazy if I weren't.  I'm much better at this kind of thing than Dave is anyway.  Hiring a dossier service is definitely worth the money, and I highly recommend it!