The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) has been successful in securing funding to help unemployed people living in the Highlands.
The council has been awarded £232,851 via the UK Community Renewal Fund, which aims to support those struggling across the country.
Six-month work placements will be created for 30 young and older workers in the Highland region.
The SCVO proposed that the money be used as part of its Community Jobs Scotland Intergenerational Pilot, which supports people of any age with their entry into third sector businesses across the region.
It will give individuals the opportunity to enter back into the workforce after being made unemployed due to the pandemic.
The Community Jobs Scotland programme has already created 9,500 jobs for people across Scotland.
‘Support unemployed people to progress’
Highland Council leader Margaret Davidson said: “This extra funding for the third sector will complement support which already exists from the Scottish Government’s Young Person Guarantee and recently launched Long-Term Unemployed programme, and allows for more work placements to be created for young people and adults.
“We will seek when working with the third sector that these work placement opportunities are created across all parts of Highland, benefitting as wide a spread of individuals as possible but also as many of our valuable third sector partners.”
Moira Cuthbertson, CJS manager at SCVO, said: “These work placements will support particularly vulnerable and recently unemployed people to progress in their employment, giving them the greatest chance of a positive long-term destination and ensure they are not left behind.
“Each participant will become an employee of a third sector organisation and with support from SCVO, the third sector employers will provide employability support to the employees through on-job training, experience, qualifications and job search support.”