Projects that help homeless people find and stay in work are some of the schemes that will share a £2.5 million fund from the Scottish Government.

The 13 initiatives covering 15 different local authority areas will receive money from the Employment Innovation and Integration Fund to increase employment support by linking up with health and social care, justice service and housing.

Among the successful initiatives is the Joined Up For Jobs Integration Project by the Capital City Partnership in Edinburgh which integrates the work of health and social care, housing and criminal justice by having a one year localities integration team to co-ordinate all activity.

Working with a social care team, the project will target social housing residents to engage with employability services, and implement framework around a Community in Motion pilot which aims to address the problems of low persistent re-offending.

North Lanarkshire Council will also receive funding to join up services for homeless residents who have recognised health, social care and housing support needs through its Access to Opportunities scheme (with a particular focus on young care leavers and vulnerable adults of all ages) and align these with a range of employability services and programmes that operate in the North Lanarkshire area.

Finally the EmployabiliTAY initiative from Dundee City Council will receive financial support to deploy a regional employability approach to integrate public services with employability and skills with a focus on housing, healthy living, and community justice and embed within employability support in Dundee, Perth & Kinross and Angus.

Announcing the funding during a visit to Dundee, minister for employ ability and training, Jamie Hepburn, said: “People affected by homelessness, who have criminal convictions or suffer from mental ill-health face significant barriers to finding work, and it can be challenging to balance the search for a job with the need to access other important services.

“These 13 new projects will join together employ ability and skills support with health and social care, housing, and justice services which will improve the quality of localised support available for people across the country.

“The work of these projects ties in with the fairer approach we are taking to deliver our newly devolved employment services.”

Full details of all the projects are available here.