Carlisle based charity 'People First' call for more employers to support people with learning disabilities
They are hoping to get boost the number of people with learning disabilities and autism in employment.
A Carlisle based charity is looking for more companies in Cumbria to come forward to help support their learners into employment.
According to the charity People First, just 4.8 per cent of people with a learning disability are currently in work in the UK. That's compared to 75 per cent of the general population.
On the back of these figures, they launched their creating careers programme.
Creating Careers is a supported employment service that's helping autistic people and people with learning disabilities contribute their skills to the workplace.
They hope that by working with employers here in the county they can change this statistic, to help people who have a huge amount to offer the workplace find meaningful opportunities.
Emma Lyons is the employability team leader, she said: "It's a very small amount of people with a learning disability that are actually in employment.
"We are trying to give our learners the skills here to be able to then go into employment. Our creating careers programme is trying to help businesses and employers see that and understand our learners have so many skills.
"They are so capable of doing just the same as other people.
"We have so many great people here with great potential who want to work and achieve great things.
"We want to break down those barriers with employers and show them that it's not as difficult as they may think to bring someone on-board who has a learning disability."
The charity are offering support to employers who may be interested in supporting their work and getting people into jobs.
They encourage a no-questions barred approach to any interested business to try and make the recruitment process as seamless as possible, with staff at the charity then becoming an extension of the businesses team.
People first employ coaches, who will be able to deliver inclusive employment training to help the business adapt its approach and culture, with mentors, who will work with candidates to support them to learn the skills they need for them to perform well in the vacancy.