Lancashire Police Community support officers axed in favour of social work

Plans to spend millions of pounds on 48 new PCSOs have been scrapped in favour of a social worker led early intervention scheme.

Lancashire County Council’s previous Tory administration had set aside £3.7m for four additional Police Community Support Officers, working in each of its 12 district council areas.

But the ruling Labour group has instead decided to spend the cash on a new ‘Early Action Response’ service, creating the equivalent of 27 full-time posts, most of whom will be social workers.

The council agreed to invest £3m, matched by £3m from Lancashire Police, on the project, which aims to work with vulnerable people before situations reach ‘crisis point’.

Council leader Jennifer Mein said tackling problems at an early stage would “produce better results for people and reduce the demand on public services”.

But Conservative group leader Geoff Driver said taxpayers wanted “more frontline policing, not more social workers”.

The service will see two teams work alongside police peers and the authority’s existing Emergency Duty Team in two of the areas of highest demand – Preston and Burnley.

The Early Action Response teams will be made up of social workers from fields including child and parenting support, mental health, youth work and youth offending, plus police staff.

Their work will consist of activities like:

– Interviewing missing people upon their return

– Performing welfare checks for vulnerable people and making child protection plans

– Joint visits to vulnerable locations such as children’s homes, hostels, youth clubs etc

– Joint working with police Public Protection Units

– Liaising with hospitals about vulnerable patient admissions, for example children with unexplained injuries or adults at crisis point

– Bridging the gap between working hours and out-of-hours emergency response

The teams will operate alongside existing initiatives like Edge of Care, which supports families where children are at risk of being taken into care, Connect 4 Life, which works with GPs to help vulnerable patients with complex needs in order to reduce A&E admissions and allow them to continue to live independently, and the Domestic Abuse Commission, bringing them together under a single service.