A SOCIAL worker has been banned from driving for four years after she was caught almost four times the drink-drive limit with her two young children in the car.

Jane Elizabeth Lamb, 36, of Abbeydale Way, Accrington, had pleaded guilty to driving with excess alcohol and being drunk in charge of a child.

She was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison, suspended for two years, made subject to community supervision for two years with an alcohol treatment requirement and banned from driving for four years.

Blackburn magistrates did not impose a separate sentence for being drunk in charge of a child when she appeared in court yesterday. The court had heard Lamb could hardly talk or stand up when she was stopped along Union Road, Oswaldtwistle, but still told police she had not had a drink.

Magistrates were told that one of the children was not strapped into the car which could have had ‘serious consequences’.

Sarah Gallagher, prosecuting, said a police officer saw a car coming towards him on the wrong side of the road.

The car swerved back, narrowly avoiding a collision. The officer turned round and stopped the vehicle. Lamb denied having alcohol but when she was breathalysed at the police station gave a reading of 125 against the legal limit of 35.

Debbie Morgan, defending, said her client works full time as a social worker and was a single parent.

At the time of the offence in 2009 she had separated from the father of her children and turned to drink.

She said Lamb had been drinking on the Saturday night when a friend came round to her home.

On the Sunday she took the children to the park and also took a bottle of wine.