ONE of the country’s best-known monasteries is teaming up with a charity to give new hope to people with complex disabilities – by putting chocolate on the menu.

Autism Plus has announced a new partnership with Ampleforth Abbey, near Helmsley in North Yorkshire, to create vocational training and work opportunities for people with disabilities.

And among their plans is catering for the sweet-toothed by making their own chocolate.

The partnership will create a range of micro social enterprises using buildings and land supplied by Ampleforth, the UK’s largest Benedictine community.

Autism Plus plans to turn the abbey’s Park House Farm buildings and surrounding land into a community-supported horticulture scheme.

Once up and running, it will sell vegetable boxes to local people and businesses, and provide fresh produce to the abbey and its two associated schools – Ampleforth College and St Martin’s Ampleforth.

Other initiatives include woodland management - and producing quality chocolate for the hotel and specialIty market.

The charity’s chief executive, Philip Bartey, said: “Many disabled people who want to work are disconnected from the workplace.

“That is either through discrimination, lack of understanding or because of a misplaced belief that real barriers prevent them from engaging positively with employers.”

Ampleforth’s Procurator, Father Wulstan Peterburs said: “Over the last 200 hundred years, Ampleforth has used its assets to support both its community and its charitable works, so this partnership fits perfectly with our Benedictine values.”

The charity provides support for people with autism and other complex needs. Its services include community support, residential living, adult learning and education and specialist employment services.

The charity points out that in 2012 only 46.3 per cent of working-age disabled people were in employment compared to 76.4 percent of working-age non-disabled people.

And disabled people living in rural areas can struggle to access training and employment due to lack of inclusion and support and limited or no access to transport.