Lancaster & Morecambe College is Changing Lives

Lancaster & Morecambe College has developed a new website, www.changinglives-lmc.co.uk, to help local residents, unemployed people and organisations to find help, support, education and training and volunteering opportunities in the district.

Changing Lives which has been funded through the Vision Board and Local Strategic Partnerships, creates links between organisations in Lancaster & Morecambe that offer help to adults and young people who may be struggling to find work or change direction in life. At present there is no central source of information which lists employment support and volunteering opportunities available to local people.

The site is part of a larger project intended to address inequality, worklessness and social exclusion.

Lancaster & Morecambe College has also received a grant from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to work with local groups who support disabled people and people with mental health problems.

“There are 12,305 people claiming some form of benefit in the district with 6,635 claiming incapacity benefit. There is a much higher incidence of ill health and disability in more deprived wards”, said David Wood, Principal of Lancaster & Morecambe College. “There is support for Disabled people and people with mental health problems; however they can sometimes face barriers and stereotyping among some employers in the district. This project is intended to highlight these issues and establish an Employment and Disability support network in the district that is better able to promote the skills of disabled people”.

Government statistics show that there are an estimated 11 million disabled people in the UK including 770,000 disabled children. Older people are more likely to be disabled than young people but the incidence of disability has risen fastest amongst children. Compared with non-disabled people, disabled people are more likely to be living in poverty, less likely to have educational qualifications and only one in two disabled people of working age are currently employed.

“People with physical impairments and other long term conditions, such as mental health problems and learning difficulties face a wide range of barriers when trying to get or maintain paid work” said project manager, Judith Stephenson. “These include attitudinal barriers, for example, among employers; policy and organisational barriers that bar participation, and physical and environmental barriers such as inaccessible buildings or transport systems. The cumulative effect of these barriers often results in the marginalisation of disabled people from the mainstream of our economy and community”.

The college is hoping that this project accompanied by the Changing Lives site will contribute towards helping local residents who find themselves at a disadvantage when trying to find paid work.

Call 01524 66215 for more information.