Communities

Aim: To offer community-based services and activities in areas of need.

Objectives:

To engage young people aged 11-19 and their communities in West Cornwall in opportunities to contribute, stay safe and achieve.
To support communities across Cornwall in the delivery of a range of locally based, freely chosen, freely accessible and freely available supervised play activities for children aged 5-12.
To work with parents and carers of children and young people under the age of 13 across Cornwall to enable them grow and change according to their own needs and priorities and have an active role in community capacity building.
To engage with communities in Penwith to enable them to work together to influence change and achieve common goals.

Current activities:

Barclays Spaces for Sport	Working with residents and agencies in Newlyn to increase the usage of the Gwavas multi-use games area and to develop new sporting opportunities for local people.
Youth Work	Our professionally qualified youth work team engage with groups of young people living in specific social housing estates focussing on the development of sustainable youth work provision. With adequate support, guidance and encouragement, young people are able to identify and develop strategies for engagement and we are developing accessible and relevant Level 1 and 2 accredited youth work training courses accordingly.
Cornwall Hopes Youth Work	Delivery of a peer-led training programme in schools to give young people the chance to develop an understanding of issues pertaining to homelessness and independent living.
Carrick Parent Participation Project	We offer support to parents by providing access to training and help with planning and recruitment for social events and run a training programme for parents who wish to improve their parenting skills and the child/adult relationships in the home and the community. We work with parents and carers of children and young people to enable them to grow and change according to their needs and priorities and have an active role in community capacity building. Parent groups will be developed in Falmouth, Penryn, Truro and Perranporth and there will also be a Carrick-wide Parent Forum.
Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities (Single Parent Action Network)	Working with parent facilitators in identified areas of Cornwall (Falmouth, Penryn, Truro, Newquay, Redruth and Camborne) to deliver seven SFSC courses.
Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities (Cornwall County Council Family Services)	Working with parent and agency facilitators across Cornwall to deliver thirteen SFSC courses to all parents, including fathers, traveller communities and parents with teenagers.
Treneere Together	Estate-based community development work delivered in partnership with local residents.
Community Development (Health)	Community development activities on estates in St Austell which have high levels of teenage pregnancies and residents with long-term sickness or disability.
Community Development (Social Capital)	Development of informal community networks in neighbourhoods throughout Cornwall.

In addition, as part of our commitment to resident involvement, we have recently established the Cornwall Residents Forum which is fundamental to the achievement of our vision and mission. The Forum has three main functions:

To represent the views of social housing residents across the county through a single unified voice to statutory organisations and service providers. The purpose of this is to ensure that at a strategic level, the needs of social housing residents are taken into account when services are being designed, giving residents the power to influence service delivery.
To give social housing residents from across Cornwall the opportunity to meet, exchange information on how individuals or community groups are working in other areas and to learn from others’ experience.
To feed information and opinion into the Board of Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change to ensure that we take the correct strategic direction and continue to meet the needs of residents in our target neighbourhoods.

For more information on the Forum including how to get involved, contact Anicka Dyer on 01209 721541.