Neighborhood Place of Puna

Neighborhood Place of Puna (npp) is a child abuse and neglect prevention program serving Puna and hilo. Npp provides intensive (weekly), ongoing (6 -12 months), one-on-one support to families at risk for child abuse and, neglect. Services can be delivered in the home, via-teleservice, in the community, in the office, or some combination of those. The supports are based on the six protective factors which have shown to minimize the risk for child maltreatment. Our program focuses on helping families create safe, stable, and nurturing homes through helping them access resources, stabilize their living situation, increase opportunities, strengthen support networks, and employ developmentally appropriate and positive parenting skills.

Neighborhood Place of Puna distributes emergency rental and utility assistance to households in Hawaii county.

In june of 2019 we expanded our programming to include an emergency shelter in Puna for families experiencing homelessness. Shelter staff work intensively with families to help them find appropriate housing, resources, and supports to help them end their period of homelessness.

Disaster data management: since 2020, Neighborhood Place of Puna was contracted by the county to collect, manage, and report on data associated with the delivery of emergency rent and utility assistance to households impacted by covid 19. Housing navigation : in september of 2021, the family resource center was expanded to include housing stability services for both unstably/unsafely housed families and homeless families to mitigate risks, and stabilize housing to support the health, safety and wellbeing of the entire family - adults and children. Housing navigation staff assist families in accessing and navigating available housing/homeless resources/assistance, provide ongoing case management for families, providing client advocacy, benefit establishment, tenancy skills, and linkage to mental health and substance use services, networking with the community and service providers to discover available resources and utilize a strength based and family focused approach. Coordination center: in september of 2021, npp added another housing stability service, the Hawaii island coordination center. The coordination center is a call center/hub which provides a single point of contact that can be accessed by the community to get assistance identifying and connecting with assistance to stabilize their housing situation whether that is rental/utility assistance, mediation, legal assistance, housing navigation, shelter, etc. The call center will provide staff for a warm line and will also explore the viability of adding additional forms of contact.