A Harrogate social enterprise has had a visit from employment minister Chris Grayling, to see for himself the impact government spending cuts are having on skills training for those needing additional support to prepare them for employment.

Mr. Grayling visited Paperworks, which is a charity that provides work experience and work skills training to people with learning disabilities, mental health and other health related barriers to work.

During his time there, he spoke to Manager Damien Handslip, who had a chance to highlight the importance of small community based training schemes that offer more personalised support programmes and greater continuity of care than larger organisations.

Mr. Handslip said funding cuts were putting some trainee places at risk and he called for urgent changes to Government and local authority policy to make it easier for people to return to work after ill health and remain in employment.

He said: "Paperworks receives no financial incentive from the DWP to secure a job for trainees and the fact that support payments stop as soon as employment begins means they often drop back out of work very quickly."

The employment minister said "I think projects like this are brilliant. When you find a social enterprise that's doing something worthwhile and really making a difference it's always exciting and encouraging. I'm very pleased to be here."

"In different ways we support financially smaller projects. Sometimes they ask for more money than we've got, but that's the challenge the government faces.

Mr. Grayling added that the government needs to make easier for projects like Paperworks to run and offer grant support where possible.

On the involvement of the government in social enterprises, he said "above all I think it's about encouraging and championing the work of individuals. A project like Paperworks succeeds not because of what the government does for it, but because of what it does for itself. It takes a really good team of people who are really committed to make it work."