Wolverhampton care workers 'unable to help families effectively' due to 'firefighting'

The council is currently looking after 800 vulnerable children and has the highest rate of care applications in the country – almost three times the national average.

And in so-called 'pressure point' areas the situation is reaching breaking point, with care workers unable to deal with the number of families requiring support.

Wolverhampton City Council's cabinet member for children and families, Councillor Val Gibson said: "We have got some pressure points across the city, such as Whitmore Reans, where care workers have been reduced to firefighting due to the numbers of cases they are dealing with.

"The result is that we are not being able to assist families as we would like."

Her comments come as the authority prepares to spend £500,000 taking on 12 social workers in a bid to reduce caseloads and curb the authority's spiralling expenditure on children in care.

Cash from the Looked After Children's service budget has been set aside to fund the workers, who will be stationed around areas of the city where the need is greatest.

The new workers will enable the authority to spend more time on each referral and look at other ways to deal with them that may not require removing children from their families.

Looked after children cost the authority an average of £40,000 per year each, but the council's children's services budget is set to be slashed by £6 million under the latest round of austerity measures.

Councillor Gibson added that the expenditure could lead to savings in the long run. She said: "Reducing the workloads of care workers is a key priority. It enables workers to properly assess children and look into alternative ways of helping families, perhaps without the need for children to be taken into care.

"While there is a need to save money, the safety of each child is the most important thing here. Having more staff in pressure point areas when referrals come through is a key element of this approach."

In 2013 a similar scheme was launched after a sharp rise in the number of children taken into care in the city resulted in a £5m overspend.

At that time eight new care workers were taken on in Bilston at a cost of £527,000, resulting in an estimated saving of around £2m according to a report to the council's Cabinet (Resources) Panel.

The workers will be employed on permanent contracts, with the success of the project evaluated by council bosses at the end of the first year.