Child protection facing shortage of specialist staff as cases soar

A council watchdog has called for Leeds Council bosses to find 2m to pay for an extra 42 social workers and six more managers.

The money would mean social workers' caseloads being limited to 20 child assessments.

Most Leeds staff have between 11 and 25 cases but some have over 25 and, in extreme cases, hard-pressed staff are dealing with more than 35, according to the watchdog's report.

It also notes concerns from managers about the calibre of newly-qualified social workers applying to the authority, raising questions about the quality of child protection training.

Earlier this month, inspectors from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission said Leeds Council's procedures for safeguarding vulnerable children were "inadequate".

Their report said more needed to be done to improve how managers assess performance and plan staffing. They recommended the council carry out an immediate review of resources to make sure there are enough people to deal with the workload.

Yesterday, the council's own watchdog, the Scrutiny Board for Children's Services, agreed the department was badly under-resourced in an interim report which follows a year-long investigation that will result in a final report later this year.

The board published the interim report containing just one recommendation – an urgent increase in staff – because it wants the money to be found before the council's budget decisions for 2010-11 are finalised next month.

The report says the number of referrals of children to social services has increased since the Baby Peter tragedy.

In September 2008, there were 386 children with a child protection plan in Leeds, but this had increased to 436 by September last year.

Last night, Councillor Bill Hyde, chairman of the Scrutiny Board for Children's Services, said: "We felt that children's social care staffing was such an important issue that it was crucial we were in a position to guide and influence the council's spending decisions in this area as early as possible.

"While we have been encouraged by some of the new children's social care recruitment initiatives in Leeds, large numbers of staff still have extremely high case loads to deal with and this has been added to by the recent increase in referrals following the publicity surrounding cases such as Baby P."

The 16-page interim report concluded: "Our view ultimately concurs with that of the recently published Ofsted inspection report, that current staffing resources for core child protection work are insufficient at present and action needs to be taken urgently."

But the report says it may be difficult for the council to find the extra money and to recruit more staff.

"Whilst we would all ideally like to see an immediate jump in the number of social workers and a consequent fall in caseloads to a level that could create an excellent service, we recognise that this cannot be achieved in the short-term with the best will in the world."