New guidelines, which have to be approved by Lancashire County Council, will set out "very restricted circumstances" in which carers can give young people contraception and pregnancy testing kits.

County Hall bosses state that the move is designed to cut down on teenage pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections and they stress the carers will receive advance training.

County Coun Marcus Johnstone, cabinet member for children and young people, said the county council acted as a "corporate parent" of young people in its care.

He said: "This means we must seek for them everything that a good parent would want for their own children."

The move follows research which shows children in care in Lancashire are at significantly higher risk of becoming teenage parents or suffering poor sexual health.

By the age of 20, 25% of young people who have been in care were young parents and 4 out of 10 young women were mothers.

A council spokesman said: "An extensive training and communications campaign will be introduced to support the new policies. No member of staff will be authorised to distribute condoms or assist with a pregnancy test until they have attended a training programme."

One of the new guidelines states a carer can give condoms to people in care if he is aware that the young person is sexually active and refuses to attend local sexual health services.