As part of your dossier, you need to include six (6) photos that show the folks at the CCAA what wonderful parents you'll be, and give some indication of your adoptive child's new home and family.
IMPORTANT: This, and your letter of introduction (Letter of Intent to Adopt), are the closest contact you'll have with the person actually making your assignment, so take some time with these, and be sure to make them reflect your own special personality.
Two full face ("bareheaded") passport photos (2 inches) of the adoptive
parent(s) are also required.
Take some photos of yourselves, your home, and your neighborhood. Be sure to include two full face photos of you (or you and your spouse) alone. You don't need to be in formal attire, but cut-offs and a Budweiser t-shirt are too casual.
You can include a photo of your child-to-be's room - toss some stuffed animals in the crib or on the spare bed to make it look more child-friendly if you don't have it totally set up yet.
Include a photo of a neighborhood park, or your backyard, or some indication of what a neat place your child will live in.
Write up a caption for each photo. The captions can be simple:
Baby's Room
or involved:
Here's where little Emily will spend her first night back in the US with her forever family. Note the panda border on the wall. Those pandas were hand-drawn by her aunt Cindy who can't wait to meet her.
Arrange your pictures and captions on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper or put them in photo sleeves. Don't use a regular photo album. It'll be much easier for the folks at the CCAA to keep your photos with your dossier if they can simply clip or staple them together. You can use drawings, stickers, computer graphics, whatever to further personalize your photo pages. Provide real photographs or scan and print. Use your imagination to draw attention to what fun parents you'll be!
Ok, that being said, how many photos should you include? Well, it's really up to you. We've seen as few 2 and as many as 16 or more. As I general guideline, we recommend 2 to 4 pages of photos. Don't feel like you have to "make up stuff" to photograph, and don't feel like you have to document your entire life either.
Some examples:
- One set of photos was from a woman who included pictures of herself as
she grew up.
- Another woman put colorful stickers all around her photos and included
some iguana stickers on the outside of her FedEx envelope and labeled them "guardians
of the dossier".
- Some people include a photo of every room in their house.
- Some people have pictures of themselves with groups of people - like from
a family or class reunion. If you include pictures like those, please make it clear
through the captions, or some other means, who the adoptive parents are.
- Some people have scanned in photos and captions and used some clip art to make them a little more interesting.
As you can see, there's no real right or wrong here, so just use your best judgment.
