A warm welcome home: Cumnock recovery project with always-open doors
By Mairi Damer
The Nest, Cumnock
Everything about The Nest offers warmth and welcome. If it’s not the rich, deep colours of the interior decor and the soft furnishings, it’s the wide smiles and ready hellos of all the people there.
Situated in the East Ayrshire town of Cumnock, The Nest is an extraordinary community project. It’s a space offering sanctuary, safety, support and healing for people who have experienced crisis or who are battling with a system not designed or able to cope with their complex problems. But according to founder Natalie Carmichael, The Nest is far more than just being a cool space where people can meet – it’s all about acceptance, compassion, love and hope. It’s a place with heart – somewhere which offers belonging for people who often feel pushed out and marginalised.
Natalie knows a bit about the need to offer wraparound support for people in trouble. As a survivor of long term domestic violence, someone who was bounced between statutory services, her vision for The Nest was it should be somewhere where this is no judgement, no stigma and no ping-ponging between health, justice and social services.
The Nest is nothing less than a place which offers crisis support, a place where a healing process can begin, and where setbacks are understood and progress encouraged. It all began with Natalie’s vision of creating a space which properly supports people, which sees people as being much more than the labels they are given. Nat wanted to create a sense of “home”, not just a physical place or a roof over heads, but somewhere where people can come home, to grow and flourish.
The aspiration and ambition was always there, but the process of finding a physical home for The Nest has been a long and tortuous one. Potential sites have been promised, only for negotiations to stall, and partnership working has not always been productive and positive. But Natalie Carmichael is not a woman who’ll be kept down for long. She and her determined band of Nestlings have now converted a former industrial unit into a vibrant, welcoming haven – somewhere everyone calls home.
And the door is always open to those who need love, understanding and support. People who come to the Nest have been drug or alcohol users, or have experienced mental health issues or domestic violence. Some have lived with trauma, abuse or neglect; others have been unable to look after their children as well as they might; some people are simply struggling with day-to-day life. What they all have in common is that they are all in recovery, just as we are all in recovery from something. What The Nest offers is somewhere which truly, deeply supports that recovery without judgement or damnation.
That’s not to say change always comes easy. People who come through The Nest’s door don’t always get a painless ride. As Nat points out, recovery can be a bumpy, erratic and lengthy process, and sometimes critical conversations have to be had, and heard. Sometime people do fall away, but there is no chastisement, only a permanent welcome back. The trick is persistence and ongoing support, despite setbacks. Witnessing people begin to accept love and compassion and start the change process is, as Nat proudly says, “a gift”.
The change process involves the gradual development of feelings of safety, of security, of being able to cope. Local services often aren’t trusted, but The Nest helps put the right support in place at the right time for each person who needs it. Indeed, many of the local services, businesses and members of the Cumnock community are witnessing, learning from and becoming increasingly supportive of The Nest’s impressive success.
And it truly is a success story. This small Ayrshire project has shown exactly how powerful community groups can be when understanding, support and massive amounts of love are offered to people when they need it the most.