Partnerships

Our partnerships mean that we have access to skilled professionals who can provide support to our local schemes and offer our members training. As scams and cybercrime are types of crime that our surveys show are at the top of our communities’ concerns we have been able to offer members scam and cybercrime training through our partners.

Cambridgeshire Neighbourhood Watch Association is a proud partner of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Against Scams Partnership a county-wide partnership of public, private and voluntary sector organisations committed to working together to stop scams and doorstep crime across the county. Partners are committed to disseminating scams prevention messages, promoting Friends Against Scams training and supporting victims of fraud and Cambridgeshire NHW are very much at the heart of this.

We have a team of trained Neighbourhood Watch members who work with the police when a resident has been the victim of a burglary. Our volunteers visit at the request of the resident and the police and offer friendly support after the initial police investigation has been completed. This has been very successful offering the victim the chance to talk about the crime and share their feelings with a member of their community. The informal chat has, on occasions, led to further information being revealed and this has made a difference to the ongoing police investigation. The discussion with the victim often leads to ways of improving their home security and in a gentle way thinking about what simple things they could do to avoid being a victim again. Often, once a house is burgled it will happen again. To date none of our victims has suffered a repeat burglary. Our volunteers offer a longer period of support than would normally be possible for the police, and so in the rare case where the victim has continued issues dealing with the crime our volunteers are in an ideal position to alert the appropriate  partners to provide professional support.