Strengthening Families
Demographic:
Enrolling families with children from birth to eighteen years old who reside within West Hawai’i, including districts of North Kohala, South Kohala, and Ka’u.
Focus:
NPK provides a welcoming safe place for parents and children to come and receive support to strengthen the family to promote positive outcomes and prevent child abuse and neglect in West Hawai’i.
Services offered to enrolled clients:
- Talk story approach to create a family success plan that focuses on family resilience and growth
- Family focused and culturally sensitive to families
- Active case management to encourage families to participate in their family success plan and goals
- Conduct routine home visits to evaluate the living environment and develop an safety plan
- Comprehensive assessments to ensure the safety and well-being of children
- Limited basic needs through The Food Basket Emergency Pantry
- Strengthen positive parenting practices
- Understand child developmental milestones
- Parent-child activities to encourage child’s learning and growing
- Youth development and engagement
- Build communication skills
- Develop problem solving/stress coping techniques
- Build practical life skills (shop with coupons/weekly ads, where to find information)
- Generate family budget
- Resume building for employment
- Enrollment into DOE (assistance with understanding Migrant, MV-1 and SPED services)
- Navigation through daycare/preschool
- Assistance completing applications (housing, daycare/preschool subsidies, SNAP, WIC, Quest)
- Gather appropriate documents for applications
- Introduction and referrals to other community service providers that fits family needs
- Warm hand off to agencies focused on strengthening and supporting family
- Provide additional services and resources based on the family’s specific requests/needs
West Hawaii Keiki Coalition (third Friday of every month):
- Inform community organizations about events happening throughout West Hawaii
- Provide a platform for other organizations/agencies to share information about their program/services
- Identify gaps or barriers in partnerships
- Organize community events to celebrate families
- Collaborate efforts with partners to overcome barriers in the community
- Support system for frontline workers representing their agency/organization
Neighborhood Place of Kona is part of Friends of the Future, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.