Education and Children's Service

A single Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) covering the county council's footprint includes Police, Education, Social Care, NHS, Probation, Fire and Rescue, Youth Offending Team, Prevention and Early Help, together with Children's and Adult Social Care teams. The MASH is the "front door" for all referrals where there is a concern about serious risk of harm for a child.  

The Duty and Assessment Team will undertake a holistic Child and Family Assessment working with the child/young person and the family, which will include gathering information from other sources such as other professionals that are involved with the child/young person and family and people who the family say are important. All adults within the home and key family members should be part of assessment. Through direct work and a collaborative approach, the Child and Family Assessment will explore the needs of the child and family, looking at the strengths within and around the family along with needs whilst jointly considering with the family what additional support can be offered to help. The principles underlying the approach of the Duty and Assessment Team is to ensure that families are supported quickly at the level of intervention that reflects their needs. Most families can be effectively supported without the need for statutory intervention.  

 The assessment may at times identify a higher level of support due to a more complex level of need. In these situations, it may recommend support under a Child In Need plan, Section 17 of the Children Act 1989. This will predominantly be provided by the Child in Need and Child Protections teams. There may be certain circumstances where support is provided by the EmPower team, such circumstances would include when need is identified from outside of the home or risks in the community. If needs escalate and the child is identified as being at risk of significant harm, they would be supported by a Child Protection Plan.

This team will provide longer term support to children, young people and families who need support either through a Child In Need plan, or a Child Protection Plan.  The Family Safeguarding Teams comprise of Social Workers and Child and Family Practitioners who work directly with children and families and adult workers who will provide specialist support to parents around Domestic Abuse, Substance Misuse and Emotional and Mental Health difficulties.   

If this intensive support does not make the positive changes required and the child/ young person remains at risk of harm, legal advice may be sought, and Pre-Proceedings commenced. The focus will remain within Pre-Proceedings of keeping the child within their family if it is safe to do so.

Sadly, some children can only be effectively safeguarded through the taking of legal action to protect them.  That may be following Pre-Proceedings, or it may occur immediately if the risks are so high that a child cannot remain safely in the family home and requires immediate removal. 

The Lancashire Family Safeguarding Team will continue to work with the family during proceedings to attempt a safe rehabilitation back to the immediate or to the wider family where this is possible. Again, for some children that will not be possible and they may either be placed for adoption at the end of proceedings or remain looked after by Lancashire. 

Lancashire's Contextual Safeguarding Team, named EmPower (a name chosen by our children), is a multidisciplinary service that responds to the needs and risks of children outside the home. We have seven teams across the county: two in the North, three in Central, and two in the East. These teams include: 

• Case-holding social workers
• Exploitation social workers
• Child and family practitioners
• Missing from home workers
• Substance misuse workers
• Mentors
• Targeted youth support workers
• Specialist and exploitation nurses
• PACE workers
• The Empower Team also work closely with the Exploitation Police and the Child and Youth Justice Service.

Contextual Safeguarding is an approach to understanding and responding to young people's experiences of significant harm beyond the home, also known as extra-familial harm. It recognizes that relationships in neighbourhoods, schools, and online can involve violence and abuse, which parents and carers have little influence over. This can undermine parent-child relationships. 

Contextual safeguarding includes child sexual exploitation, peer-on-peer violence and abuse (including gangs), modern slavery, harmful sexual behaviour, criminal exploitation, and going missing. These issues often overlap, creating complex harmful circumstances for children, young people, families, and communities (Firmin, 2017). 

The service aims to work safely with children (and their families) who are vulnerable to or at risk of abuse from outside the home, or those experiencing family relationship breakdowns, to prevent them from becoming looked after. The team provide direct, intensive multidisciplinary support to children aged 13-18, and younger if they are at risk of exploitation. 

Social workers and other key professionals will work closely to support children and young people to remain living with their immediate family. In some situations, it is not possible for our children and young people to remain in their family home, but this is something that we will regularly revisit.    

Lancashire County Council are committed to ensuring that together with our partners, we will promote positive outcomes for our children and young people who are unable to live with their family.    

For children and young people who need to be cared for by foster carers, residential staff, extended family members, or keyworkers, we want to deliver outstanding and aspirational social work practice working alongside our children and young people.   

The focus of the work within the Children in Our Care Service will be on achieving permanence for our children and young people, supporting dreams to become a reality, and preparing our children and young people for their next steps into adulthood. 

The leaving care service provide support, information and guidance to young people that have been in our care up to and/or following their 16th birthday.   

Care Leavers are allocated a Personal Advisor (PA) no later than their 17th birthday and they will provide support until they are 21 and up to 25 should the young person feel they require ongoing support. The PA will act as a focal point to ensure that care leavers receive the right type of support. For a comprehensive guide to the role of a PA please see:    

The service priorities are to ensure that young people are living in suitable accommodation, engage in aspirational education, employment or training opportunities and are able to contribute positively within their local communities. 

This service looks after vulnerable children and young people in a variety of ways. It finds adoptive parents and foster carers for those who are unable to remain with their families. It provides residential specialist support, and overnight and short breaks for both parents and children. The Youth Offending Team prevents anti-social behaviour and offending as well as supporting young people who have offended.  

The service manages the county’s libraries, museums and the county archive. There is a network of libraries throughout the county which loans books, DVDs and CDs as well as providing access to the internet. There is also a mobile library service, and digital library which allows people to loan e-books. The service manages a number of museums which preserve the county’s rich history and heritage and the county archive. 

This service provides a wide range of support to the county’s schools and other education settings. This includes the School Adviser Service, which intervenes with struggling schools, as well as providing a range of other support. The service also carries out statutory duties to ensure children attend school regularly, monitors and promotes educational outcomes for looked after children and manages the school admissions process across Lancashire.  

The service also ensures that Lancashire has enough sufficient quality childcare, administers the free early years education entitlement for two, three- and four-year olds, and is responsible for safeguarding in early years settings. 

This service identifies, assesses, monitors and provides for the special educational needs of children and young people up to 25 years old, and supports their families. The service also provides the county council’s statutory duties linked to the support needed by children with disabilities. It does this in a number of ways including the provision of accommodation, care and supervision orders and breaks for both the young people and their careers.  

The Child and Family Wellbeing Early Help teams provide a targeted Early Help response to family needs, alongside universal provision. Early Help Partnership Officers are allocated to each of the 5 NHS Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) areas in Lancashire so that there is a strong alignment between early help and school improvement.  

The Children and Family Wellbeing Service (CFW) brings together a range of former services that work with children, young people and families, including Children’s Centres, the Young People’s Service, Prevention and Early Help and Lancashire’s response to the national Troubled Families Unit programme. The service offers a wide range of support across the 0 - 19yrs+ age range (25 years for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities - SEND) with a ‘whole family’ approach.  

The Inclusion Service advises and supports parents, carers, families, and professionals with special educational needs. The offer includes advice and support from our specialist teachers, educational psychologists, and assessment team and specialist social workers. The inclusion service also includes the 'children with disabilities service' that includes qualified social workers.  

Lancashire County Council Cultural Services is comprised of a comprehensive network of libraries across the county, prison library service, mobile libraries, home library service, museum service, conservation and collections, archives and local history, music service, heritage learning, outdoor education, cultural development, school library service, information development, resources, and support teams. Together we support, develop, deliver, and enable a wide range of positive cultural opportunities.

Lancashire is rich in its heritage and culture. Our collections and venues reflect Lancashire’s diversity and uniqueness. Culture plays an important role in the health, happiness, and economy of Lancashire and provides a sense of place. Culture cannot easily be defined within a familiar list, but it has the combined influence upon all our lives of creativity, the arts, physical activity, access to museums, galleries, libraries, archives, and heritage.

Our cultural sector is the network of individuals, community groups, Friends and volunteers, organisations, communities, local authorities, and businesses that together preserve, reflect, celebrate, and promote who we are, in all our rich diversity. Cultural Services is uniquely placed to enable great culture and creativity to flourish – and to ensure that everyone can have access through safe, accessible venues and events. Working together we can support stronger communities with residents and visitors enjoying our rich culture and heritage.