An MS sufferer has a new lease of life after a social enterprise gave her safe access to her home in Smethwick.

Jacqueline Barrett of Stony Lane had been unable to use her wheelchair unaided until lifework built a new pathway on the drive to the side of her home under Sandwell Council’s Handy Person Scheme.

She said: “This has opened up my life and removed my fear of the wheelchair turning over.  I have been given back some independence to my life.”

The Handy Person Scheme provides free gardening and hard landscaping for disadvantaged Sandwell residents in private housing, while the Handy Person Security Scheme fits locks, chains, spyholes and gate bolts for free.

They are two of a number of such programmes subcontracted by Sandwell to lifework to improve security and gardens of both local authority and private homes across the borough.

lifework also secures homes recently burgled in Sandwell, delivers life, skills and employability training to return the long-term jobless to work and is bidding for a raft of other contract-based back-to-work support programmes.

Interim MD Craig WIlliams says: “It is a tough time for jobseekers with the economy still faltering, the West Midlands bearing the worst of the job cuts and Sandwell being among the worst hit areas.

“It makes us all the more determined to make lifework the very best company of its type in the country and so to improve the life and lot of the people of Sandwell.”

It seems they’re making inroads already.  As Jacqueline says: “I can only repeat thank you all for changing my life, for which I will be eternally grateful.”

• Call lifework on 0121 565 8930