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Adopting in Singapore - Choose your agent carefully

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15carrig
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Adopting in Singapore - Choose your agent carefully

Post by 15carrig » Wed, 19 Mar 2014 7:59 pm

If you're planning on adopting in Singapore, please choose your agent carefully. I made a mistake, and the consequences are awful.

I started my adoption journey about 18 months ago. I went through the home study process and everything was fine. I tried adopting through the government scheme but they told me that since I was a foreigner, my chances were slim to none. So I approached 4 different agencies. One wouldn't deal with me as I am single - they pride themselves on being a Christian agency. Two were really lovely but had long waiting lists. The last one, an Indian lady with her own agency, came with a caveat - she was a nightmare to deal with, but she delivered (pardon the pun).
I met with this agent, and she promised me a baby who was due to be born in about 4 months. I couldn't believe my luck. I paid her a deposit of $5000. She said she couldn't tell me the total final cost as this depended on hospital costs etc, which I understood, but then I still couldn't get a straight answer on her fees. I moved apartments (to a more expensive and bigger place), I told my company I would need some time off, I got practically very prepared for this baby ( I had been emotionally prepared for a lot longer). I could never get the agent to return my calls, but was told by people who had adopted through her that this was normal. The due date came, and i received a message from another connected party to say the baby had been born. The agent never told me. I called her and she made up some excuse about why this wouldn't work out. but she promised me another baby the following month. When that month passed, she told me she had two babies available the next month. And then she stopped taking my calls for weeks. When I did get through to her, she told me she had allocated me a baby due to be born in another 5 months. She never said anything about what had happened to the 4 earlier babies. Since then, the new Singapore requirements for EU citizens adopting locally mean that I cannot now adopt in Singapore.

I know there are a lot of expats in Singapore trying to adopt. I encourage you to please reach out to others who have adopted. The list of agents isn't too big, and most adoptive parents will have reached out to a lot of agents. One in particular will stand out above all others as being a nightmare to deal with. I won't mention her name here, but please be careful. Her ethics are totally questionable. There have been other posts on this site written about the same woman, and I wished I had listened to them instead of thinking I was going to be one of the lucky few who she had come through for. She asks people if they want to pay more to go to the top of the waiting list. She never asked me that, I was the person who kept getting pushed further down the list whenever someone else paid to leapfrog me.

Good luck in your adoption journey, but don't let this woman be part of it. If you are in the process of adopting here, I'd be happy to share more details.

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PNGMK
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Post by PNGMK » Wed, 19 Mar 2014 10:51 pm

Sorry to hear of your story. It's a competition to get an adopted child here for sure.

Beeroclock
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Post by Beeroclock » Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:25 am

Yeah I'm sorry to hear about this too. You must have suffered a lot emotionally with all those broken promises. On the financial side, will you try to recover your money? I don't know if you have a contract or at least a receipt for the $5,000 deposit paid, but personally I hope you might try to recover your money and lodge a formal complaint against this woman if she doesn't refund it to you. She shouldn't be allowed to get away with it, and it will only encourage her to continue/expand and cause more people pain and loss.....

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