By Anne E. O’Malley
Kaua‘i People
"If you want to save the community, you need to save the kids
first," says Marie Manguchei, a Wailua Homesteads foster parent to about 50
youth over her lifetime. She appears unflappable as around her, a tangle of five
special needs teens, two young grandchildren, two fox terriers and other
assorted family members cook, clean, crash, compute and create.
Marie—the youth call her "Aunty" or sometimes "Mom" loves what
she does. But being a foster parent to troubled teens with special needs is not
the easiest job.
She and her husband Leonard, now deceased, became foster parents
after working with a relative’s young, troubled family member. That episode led
to meeting a young girl of 16 who’d been on probation most of her life.
When the governing agency with responsibility for the young girl
asked the Mangucheis to foster her, they stepped up to the plate.
Over 20 years later, Man-guchei says, "She still calls me mom
and her kids call me grandma." Reflecting on the start of a fostering career,
Manguchei says, "We just wanted to reach out to the kids. What I wanted to share
was my love for them, to share with them that in this world no matter how hard
it is, you can become the best—you can become leaders." The Manguchei’s next
foster child, arriving as a young teen 20 years ago, still lives with Manguchei—as
does her husband and two daughters—plus another daughter that Marie legally
adopted. Add five more teens and that’s one very full house!
Says David Watkins, 17, and until he came to live with Aunty
Marie in 2004, considered outrageous and no longer placeable in foster care,
"It’s never boring, that’s for sure!" Manguchei says, "We call ourselves the
‘ohana of the rainbow. Sometimes, David will call me from school and say,
‘Auntie, go look at the rainbow!’" Manguchei opens her heart and her house, and
has taken steps to ensure legal guardianship of the youths where she can. She
loves them just as they come to her and tells them, "No matter what happens,
I’ll always love you. I’ll never stop loving you." Manguchei uses the Hawaiian
method of ho‘oponopono to resolve conflict. Gathering around the family table,
each child gets a chance to speak and conflict gets resolved in the open.
When Manguchei notices that something’s troubling one of her
teens, she’ll let the youth know it has to come out—maybe not right then, but it
will have to—and in their own time, they find a way to tell her what’s going on.
There’s always something going on and Manguchei makes it her
business to know what it is. She says, "They came from a lifestyle of sex abuse
and drug abuse, physical
SEE KEIKI PAGE 10
FOSTER CARE
May is National Foster Care Month. There’s a special need for
foster parents who will take teens and children with special needs. In Hawai‘i,
the go-to agency for foster care is Partners in Development Foundation, a
nonprofit organization awarded a master contract by the state Department of
Human Services to form Hui Ho‘omalu (a group to protect and shelter).
Recognizing there’s power in numbers and collaborations, PIDF
partnered with Catholic Charities Hawai‘i, Foster Family Programs of Hawai‘i and
a consortium of other community providers to form the Hui. The collaboration is
intended to create and implement innovative strategies to better meet the needs
of Hawai‘i’s children in foster care as well as the foster/resource families who
care for them.
If you’d like to welcome foster children into your home, call
PIDF toll-free at 888.879.8970.
