Fostering a climate of care and support

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

Ja-me Linkee hugs his mom, Janet, who needed help and support after Ja-me was born with health problems. The Hale Malama foster care program exists to help care for medically fragile children. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Ja-me Linkee was almost 2 years old before he had ever seen a face without a medical mask.

He had never been on a car ride, visited grandma's house or been the guest of honor at a traditional baby lu'au. It was celebration enough that he was alive.

Today, he is an 11-year-old success story. At 4 feet tall and 65 pounds, he has overcome the odds of being born 11 weeks premature to teenage parents who didn't know how to deal with his massive medical problems, including underdeveloped lungs that forced Ja-me to be on a ventilator.

He also is a foster care program's story of triumph, one that his foster mother hopes will inspire others to take in medically fragile children until the children can be reunited with their birth parents.

Anita Barshaw, a parent consultant with Catholic Charities' Hale Malama foster care program, took Ja-me in because she didn't know who else would.

The state had stepped in because Ja-me's condition was so severe, determining that his needs were too overwhelming for his young parents to handle. As a social worker with a nursing background, Barshaw knew how to teach Janet and Mervin Linkee how to care for their son.

She considers Ja-me a mission accomplished because his medical condition stabilized, and his birth parents were able to resume caring for him. But for Barshaw, who has taken in 54 foster babies over the years, Ja-me also represents the need for foster parents here who are willing to care for seriously ill children.

Without foster families to care for them, sick children often are left in the hospital or institutionalized, she said.

Four children, ranging in age from 2 to 12, live at Kapi'olani Medical Center now and are prime candidates for medical foster care, said Elise Boardman, the nursing case manager for medically fragile children there.

"We don't have anyplace else to discharge these children," she said. The birth parents haven't given up parental rights, but neither have they learned to master the technical skills necessary to keep the children healthy.

"We sent these kids to school from here," Boardman said. "They live here because there is no other place for them to live.

"It's very sad," she said. "They are technology dependent, but they are not invalids. They live here because their parents are not able to provide the amount of care they need."

The Department of Human Services is starting a program to address the problem.

Foster care services will be part of the Medicaid waiver program for medically fragile children, designed to help children from birth to 21 years old with complex medical problems. Interested foster parents will be screened and trained to assume the role as caregivers.

The goal is to help parents such as Ja-me's beat the odds.

Barshaw was to the Linkees what the program wants to find for other families: their lifeline.

But it wasn't always such a happy story.

In the beginning, Janet and Mervin Linkee resented Barshaw for taking their son away.

The Linkees were unmarried and 17 and 19 years old respectively when Ja-me was born. The state's Child Protective Services wouldn't let them bring their baby home. They had to prove that they were not drug users and that they were fit parents. But they also had to give Ja-me up for foster care before they could get him back.

"At that time, the only way for him to get out of the hospital was to put him in foster care," Barshaw said. "His medical condition was so complicated that it was the only option."

Ja-me was 20 months old when he came into the Hale Malama program. He was on 19 medications and 58 doses a day — and that was on a good day.

Janet and Mervin Linkee would visit twice a week at Barshaw's home in Kailua. Barshaw taught them how to measure medicine, and the families bonded over games of ping pong.

That experience, said Mervin Linkee, "made me not be the tough guy I wanted to be. It helped me to see Jesus, kind of lean on him and not myself. I needed to change."

Through the mentoring, the Linkees and Barshaws adopted each other as family, as well.

Barshaw's husband, Brad, a minister, even presided over Janet and Melvin's marriage nearly eight years ago.

Ja-me is now in fifth grade at Red Hill Elementary. He is small compared with other children his age, and he still gets sick sometimes. He used to have to carry an oxygen tank in his backpack. But he has been off oxygen for six months.

Barshaw, who now lives in Kapolei, said Ja-me's parents' willingness to do whatever was necessary for their son helped them overcome the odds.

"The couples that can get beyond their own pain and anger and do what they're supposed to do will get their child back," she said. "Not only can they get back their child, but they can build a support system."

In retrospect, Janet Linkee says medical foster care saved her son — and her family.

"I was going to sacrifice anything to get him home," she said. "But when I look back at it, everything worked out for the best. I feel that we are blessed. We are very blessed."

"And so are we," Barshaw said.

Reach Tanya Bricking at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.