A Suffolk social enterprise is among three community schemes to scoop £25,000 from the regional development agency.

Headway Suffolk, based in Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds, works with people with a neurological condition to help them get back into work, providing skills including CV writing, driving and interview skills.

Two Norfolk projects, Action Community Enterprises in Norwich, which is piloting a new model for engaging young unemployed people with employers, Worksense, and Purfleet Trust in King’s Lynn, whose Learn2Earn project helps people with barriers to employment, also share in the £75,000 windfall through the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

It’s a further boost for the projects, which were among eight in Suffolk and Norfolk granted £20,000 each through the Community Challenge Fund in 2016.

The three chosen projects have forecast that they will help 64 people to gain paid employment in the next year and an additional 144 people to become ‘work ready’. Each will receive the funds from the Challenge Fund for this additional delivery and to help them to mainstream their projects into their core offer beyond Challenge Fund assistance.

New Anglia LEP’s Doug Field said: “All the projects funded over the first three years of the Community Challenge Fund are doing vital work, helping hundreds of people into work or into a position where they can confidently look for work. Headway Suffolk’s Helen Fairweather said they were “delighted” to receive a second grant, adding that they had helped 27 people with a neurological condition to gain employment.

“This important grant funding will be used to set up a social enterprise offering employment to people with a neurological condition with any surplus income being used to further strengthen Headway Suffolk,” she said.

Stephen Singleton, chief executive at Suffolk Community Foundation, said: “We are delighted to work in partnership with the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership to ensure that their grant funding reaches vital grass roots projects like Headway Suffolk. Together, our partnership working and joined up thinking will really make a difference to ensure that those who face neurological challenges can live productive and happy lives with dignity.”