Neighbourhood Action Teams

Cornwall Works Plus is a contract running across the whole of the county whose primary aim is to support workless people into long term and satisfying employment. Over the next three years Cornwall Works Plus will work hard to achieve its aim but it is important that we leave a legacy that will ensure the benefits are reaped well beyond the life of this or indeed any other project.

Pivotal to this concept is the formation of Neighbourhood Action Teams (NATs) in areas that have been identified as being at a disadvantage for complex social and economic reasons.  Please click on the Excel spreadsheet to the right of this page to show where the Neighbourhood Action Teams will be situated in Towns, Wards and Neighbourhoods / Super Output Areas across Cornwall.

                                                                                  

So what is a NAT? Well if you are wondering this you are not on your own because a NAT above all is designed to be responsive to community need and so it will appear in different ways in different areas at different times. The core NAT concept however is to ensure that areas of disadvantage have access to the services they need to provide equitable opportunity to those living within it. A typical NAT will contain access to such things as health information, financial advice, a neighbourhood representative, access to employment and training support and a multi agency network panel. There will also be an emphasis on the provision of capacity building and training to ensure that the co ordination of these services can continue and build at a local resident led level.

In the West of Cornwall there is already a lot of this work being done but in the East we will have our work cut out for us as there has been little or no NAT emphasis to date. This means that Cornwall Works Plus will be starting from scratch and we are already working with managers from well developed neighbourhoods to establish how we can sow the seeds in the East so that it can begin to receive the same support. This will not be an easy task but Cornwall Works Plus is dedicated to creating a lasting legacy and so we will bring the NATs to reality in any creative and innovative way that we can.