http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/

Big Lottery fund gives £7m to help single Scots mums develop crucial work skills

Mar 21 2012 By John Ferguson

SCOTLAND’S poorest single mums are to benefit from £7million of lottery funding to help them get into work.

The cash will finance community projects thatallow parents who are coping alone to developnew skills.

There are more than 174,000 lone parents with 295,000 children in Scotland – and almost half are believed to be living below the poverty line.

The funding was announced yesterday by Big Lottery Fund Scotland director Jackie Killeen at an employability course for single parents at Rosemount Lifelong Learning, in Royston, Glasgow.

She said: “This funding will help many of Scotland’slone parents and will put their needs, which vary from family to family, first.

“With Making it Work, we want to see services such as education, employability and childcare coming together and joining up around individual families.

“This will give lone parent families a better chance of a better future.”

Satwat Rehman, director of One Parent Families Scotland, said: “This programme will offer vital support. I hope it will help enable lone parents to make informed choices and improve their own and their children’s life chances.”

Young mum Samantha Devine, 18, benefits from courses run at the Rosemount centre.

She said: “Rosemount has been great. I have been learning loads of things, from cookery classes to learning how to apply for jobs.

“There is a creche where my two-year-old daughter Taigan can play while I’m learning.”

Paul ChampionStrategic Project Manager

Mobile: 07540 704920

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