Grant funding has been agreed to support the development of a pilot project in Carlisle designed to help young people develop workplace skills.

Cumbria County Council's local committee for Carlisle agreed yesterday to provide a grant of £11,088 to the Right2Work Community Interest Company, a subsidiary of the Oaklea Trust, a Cumbrian charity dedicated to supporting vulnerable people to live and work as independently as possible.

The grant agreed by the local committee, which is made up of county councillors representing the Carlisle area on the county council, will help to fund a pilot project in Carlisle providing outdoor placements for small groups of young people in real workplaces.

Right2Work supports young people with learning disabilities, physical disabilities and complex needs. The pilot scheme it intends to develop will, in addition to the proposed outdoor placements, also offer one to one "vocational profiling and task analysis" for each participant, as well as employability and functional skills qualifications where needed.

The pilot scheme will help young people return to school, into college, into a supported internship or into employment.

Right2Work has recently launched the same pilot scheme in Eden.

In Carlisle, the scheme will work with established networks including the local Job Centre Plus, local employers, social work teams, child and adolescent mental health teams and careers advisers, in order to help each young person on the programme with placement opportunities.

The pilot project will work with 12 young people, between the ages of 16 and 24, and aims to increase the employability and transferable skills of those it works with.

Right2Work provides a diverse range of opportunities for people in Cumbria, including pastoral support and extracurricular activities for young people and learning opportunities in work settings for people with learning difficulties.