TRAFFORD Centre for Independent Living has launched a project aimed at providing free training for people with disabilities and their personal assistants (PAs).

After securing funding, under the Skills for Care scheme, the Sale-based disability charity plans to run a range of workshops in partnership with Age UK Trafford.

Skills for Care is the strategic body for workforce development in adult social care in England and an independent registered charity working with 35,000 adult social care employers.

Workshops will cover a range of topics including advising disabled people how to provide pensions for their PAs.

Carers will also be able to learn first aid and moving and handling skills to help them in their work.

The bid for funding for the project was put together by Trafford CIL’s CEO, Sophie Miles.

In the funding application she said: “We are seeing more complex social care with our individual employers, and we want to grow the skills of PAs to meet this need.

"The development of the course will enable employers to be good employers, by understanding and meeting their legal obligations, including pension auto-enrolment.”

Trafford CIL's project officer, Jules Kennedy, said: “Teaching PAs first aid will ease the pressure on NHS resources by reducing the number of visits to hospital’s accident and emergency (A&E) departments.”

The training is also open to unpaid carers and the sort of issues covered have come from the iCare Ambassadors scheme, a pilot project run by Trafford CIL earlier this year.

Jules said: “A lot of individual employers will end up paying for training themselves because they don’t have access to mandatory funding. This is going to be fully funded so people can access it for free and we’re encouraging people from around Greater Manchester to come and receive free training that we’re going to be delivering.”

People employing PAs can also be trained to be good employers and everyone attending one of the one day courses will receive a certificate supporting their Continued Professional Development and a free information pack.

The Skills for Care workshops are due to begin at the end of July and anyone interested in finding out more should call Jules Kennedy on 0161 850 0645 or e-mail j.kennedy@traffordcil.co.uk.