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I finally found an agency that will accept single moms in their Taiwan program. However, singles have to be open to children ages 7 and up or children of all ages with special needs.
Therefore, this brings me to the point of my thread. What type of special needs are available in Taiwan? Are they mild/medically correctable like China's special needs or more difficult?
I'm open to special needs similar to this: Cleft lip/palate, clubbed foot/feet, heart defects, some hearing loss, missing digits, missing limbs, Hepatitis A, B or C, HIV, birth marks, correctable vision problems,etc.
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Taiwan is not like China, with centralized referrals. Each American agency works with one or more social welfare organizations in Taiwan. Those agencies will have their own rules, which may or may not be more strict than the national rules.
They also will have their own populations of available children with special needs. When you tell an agency the sorts of special needs that you will accept, it can tell you if it has ever seen children with those needs in that social welfare organization.
And once you apply and have a homestudy approving you for one or more special needs, the agency will work with the social welfare organization to identify a child with those needs. Of course, do remember that Taiwan is a very small country, and fairly prosperous. As a result, there simply aren't thousands of available children, as there are in China. You could wait a long time until a suitable child becomes available in that organization.
Still, I think you should go forward. Some of the special needs you mention are by no means considered minor/correctable, and many people are deterred by them. Thus, you should stand a good chance of being able to adopt a child if one is available.
As you probably know, cleft palate may require several surgeries and lots of dentistry, plus speech therapy and so on. Hep. B and C are lifelong conditions, and some children with these viruses will have liver damage now or in the future, or may require treatment with antivirals. HIV is certainly a lifelong condition, which may or may not respond well to antivirals. And so on.
To adopt a child with one of these needs, as a single person, you will need to convince a homestudy agency, a placement agency, the USCIS, and the foreign country that you can afford to provide the necessary care, have extremely good medical insurance, have guardians who will be willing to take the children if you should die or become incapacitated, have a job that will allow you to take off time to deal with frequent doctor visits, surgery, etc., and have a good social support system to help out in times of stress.
So read up on these conditions and be very sure that you have the ability to provide for the needs of a child with them. Then talk to the agency; things could work out very well for you.
Also, be aware that Hong Kong, although part of China in many ways, has its own adoption system. Because it is a prosperous place, and domestic adoption of healthy children occurs, most of the available children have special needs, including some of those you mentioned. While it gives preference to people of Chinese heritage, it DOES accept non-Chinese people for children with special needs. Talk to an agency that serves Hong Kong.
Sharon
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By the way, HIV is technically an "excludable" condition. Under federal law, people with certain diseases cannot get approval to come into the U.S., except under a very strictly maintained waiver program.
In short, if you wish to adopt a child with HIV, you will not be able to immigrate him/her UNLESS you qualify for a waiver. Waivers are given ONLY to a limited number of people who have a great deal of knowledge about the disease and its transmission (medical professionals are in the best position to meet this criterion) AND who have very strong financial and insurance situations.
The U.S. government does not want to admit a person who will become a threat to public health. It also does not want to admit a person who will wind up going on public assistance. As a result, expect a lot of paperwork if you want to immigrate a child with HIV.
Sharon
We adopted our son from Taiwan in 2008. It's hard to summarize the Taiwan adoption program because you have diversity in the four major facilitators/orphanage.
From my perspective, special needs in Taiwan ranges from things you see in the China special needs program to things you don't see. I've seen children with limb differences, hemangioma's, and spina bifida on waiting lists. I've also seen things like drug/alcohol exposure, global developmental delays (with significant cognitive delays), and "complex social histories". The last category covers many of the challenges that children in our own foster system may have experienced like abuse, sexual abuse etc. I've also seen children children with some needs (known at the time of referral) referred into the NSN programs. Our own son was reported to be born at a level of prematurity that would have him listed in a SN program in other countries (and we were in a NSN program).
If you have found a program that is willing to work with you, I'd definitely ask them a) what types of needs are they seeing in their program and b) what types of need could they see. Best of luck! While Taiwan isn't always an easy program to navigate, it's also a very cool one too.