Schoolteachers in Blackpool are forced to take on the job of social workers

The resorts schools are the focus of an Inside Out documentary being aired on BBC 1 tonight which reveals the shocking story of how teachers are acting as social workers to local families

Primary school head teacher Sarah Smith, who looks after Christ the King and St Cuthbert’s Catholic Academies relates how her school staff provide support and resources to pupils and families who are struggling and can't get help elsewhere.

This ranges from providing food, clothes and even beds for families desperately in need.

Her staff make around three home visits a day - even picking up pupils whose parents can’t afford the bus money to get to school.

The schools are in the top 1 per cent of the most deprived neighbourhoods in England. Families struggle with low incomes, health and living conditions.

Sarah says:“Our schools are on the front line to tackle poverty 100 per cent. We see these families day in day out, we see their struggles. It might be they have problems with housing, with unemployment, it might be benefit related...they perhaps can’t get to school because they can’t afford to, they won’t eat properly, they won’t heat the house and we pick up the pieces.

“My worry is we will stretch ourselves too thinly. But there isn’t anyone else out there able to give the support we provide that aren’t already overstretched. I didn’t come into this job to do this part of the job but sadly it’s needed. If we don’t do it, the question is, who will?”

She is calling on the government for radical change.

“It shouldn’t be left to schools. 100 per cent it should not.”

Family support manager Lyndsay Truelove will tell the programme: "I'm just doing an application now for a family living in an overcrowded home with their children sleeping on mattresses on the floor.

" If we can get beds and duvets and clean bedding they can get a good night's sleep. It's an essential we take for granted but other people haven't got what we have and that's hard to accept. If I wasn't working in this job I probably wouldn't realise the extent of the problem we have here, particularly in Blackpool.

One struggling Blackpool mum Stacey, is on a zero hours contract. She says: "We wouldn't have got through Christmas and New Year without school support and help.

" School have helped us with gas and electric, food, kept us warm as a family. It shouldn't be happening

"We both work so we should be able to provide for our family. I shouldn't have to source things from school and food parcels. It shouldn't be happening to a number of people. School have been amazing for lots of families."

The programme goes out at 7.30pm