June is National Reunification Month, celebrating the successful reunification of families who have returned to safety and health thanks to Child Welfare Services interventions and community providers and a lot of hard work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year, Partners in Development Foundation\u2019s Hui Ho\u2018omalu program had the privilege of witnessing some of these effort come to fruition as Kaua\u2018i resident Estrella Barnett regained custody of her daughter Alexi after being separated by CWS in August 2016. Looking back, Barnett says there are days it all feels like a dream. While their journey has not been an easy one, it has been fueled by determination, commitment, and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Barnett and Alexi were separated, Barnett went into rehab on the mainland for four months to do the personal work of shifting priorities. When she returned to Kaua\u2018i she could no longer live with her parents who were fostering Alexi, and so had to find a place of her own. She found a new job, attended daily AA\/NA meetings as required by CWS, and had regular visits with Alexi under CWS supervision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although at first her family distrusted her and didn\u2019t believe she had changed, Barnett stayed committed to her path of recovery so she could be reunited with her daughter. \u201cLife is not easy,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard and I couldn\u2019t have got here without my family and without God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
June is National Reunification Month, celebrating the successful reunification of families who have returned to safety and health thanks to Child Welfare Services interventions and community providers and a lot of hard work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,20,35,34],"tags":[193,248],"class_list":["post-4109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hui-hoomalu","category-news","category-programs","category-success-stories","tag-hui-hoomalu","tag-national-reunification-month"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4110,"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4109\/revisions\/4110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pidf.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}