THOUSANDS of children living in poverty or violence are to be helped with a new Blackpool family support strategy.

Some 40 per cent of Blackpool's 31,000 children are said to be living in poverty, 5,000 in lone parent families, 2,700 afflicted by domestic violence and 4,500 with special educational needs - with high levels of young truants falling prey to criminal activity.

Blackpool Council social services, education, health service and voluntary sector chiefs joined forces, going out into schools and community centres to research what help parents and children themselves wanted to overcome often desperately lonely, poverty-stricken, crime-ridden backgrounds.

The result was the new strategy, launched on Tuesday (May 25), costing £750,000 to implement this year alone. It includes: 15 newly-appointed specialist social workers; two family centres; family projects being set up in deprived areas; trained staff going out to visit families; a family mediation project; special services for children in contact with illegal drugs, and child sex victims or attackers; extra sport and leisure activities.

Daphne Sanders, social services assistant director, said: "These measures will actually happen and we are setting up a monitoring body to make sure they do."

Social services chairman Sue Wright said: "Our radical vision for the future aims to help parents and their children escape from the hoplessness and despair they often feel by improving the quality of their life."

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