Neighbourhood Approach and Local Action Plans

Our research shows that working at a hyper local neighbourhood level with system partners to codesign and deliver an action plan can help reduce inequalities for our communities with greatest need. JU:MP identified and worked in 8 neighbourhoods, establishing local JU:MP action groups each engaging 20 – 30 partners including schools, council partners, community and faith organisations for two to three years. A collaborative, solution focussed ethos was established with distributed leadership being a key element. Each group co-designed and jointly delivered a local action plan that successfully drove forward work on place based physical activity.

The JU:MP local action plans lay at the heart of the neighbourhood approach. In each neighbourhood a community engagement manager started with a mapping phase, building relationships with local partners with whom they identified local assets. The community engagement managers then brought the partners together to create a JU:MP action group (JAG) and facilitated the co-design of a local action plan through three collaborative workshops. These workshops were led by the core JU:MP team who ensured the views of local children and families gathered through their community engagement were regularly fed in.

The JU:MP action group workshops were developed through an in-depth test and learn process. Importantly they built the knowledge, skills and understanding of local partners to take a whole systems approach to physical activity and to incorporate wider evidence into their planning process. Through the workshops they also learnt to apply behaviour change theory in practice and build on local assets to overcome barriers to being active in the neighbourhood. This shared understanding of the approach and the resulting action plan formed the basis for the next two to three years of activity. The eight JU:MP action groups met every six weeks and the local action plans were successfully delivered by the groups and facilitated by the JU:MP team.

As with all of JU:MP’s work, the programme design aimed for long term sustainability from the outset. With the action plans, this meant community engagement managers acted mainly as facilitators; so the plans were owned by and belonged to the community that created them. After two years the JU:MP core team transitioned from intensive neighbourhood work to offering light touch support to encourage the work to continue and the group to take full ownership of the goals.