by political editor Paul Francis

A shortage of social workers is placing "serious burdens" on Kent County Council and could affect its ability to protect children from abuse or neglect, a report has warned.

The warning comes in a review of children’s social services commissioned by KCC in the wake of the 'Baby P’ tragedy.

The report also reveals that between 15 to 20 per cent of calls made to the county council about possible child neglect over the period of the review were abandoned and some referrals have taken up to five days to process.

However, the council said it had now cleared the backlog and was taking steps to improve the way calls were dealt with.

The shortage of social workers comes as Kent, in common with other authorities, has recorded a dramatic rise in child protection referrals since the publicity surrounding a series of high-profile child abuse cases.

Referrals rose by 22 per cent in Kent last year to 17,360 - an increase of more than 5,000.

The report, Safeguarding Children in Kent: Defending and Developing The Service, says that in January, vacancy rates in some child protection teams were as high as 40 per cent. Overall, just under a third of vacancies across all social worker posts were unfilled.

KCC said more staff had since been recruited and it currently had about 60 posts vacant out of 334 - just under one in five. It has allocated an additional £1.5m for recruitment.

The report, due to be presented to county councillors on Monday states: "Despite the recruitment of overseas social workers and a continued programme of recruitment, the peaks in vacancy rates in individual teams coupled with the marked increase in referral rates places serious burdens on remaining staff, which can present a potential risk to maintaining a safe child protection system."

In a foreword to his report, KCC chief executive Peter Gilroy says "it portrays a service that is just about coping with some difficult pressures but with its morale intact."

It makes a series of recommendations but concludes there is no evidence to suggest "significant risk or clearly dysfunctional working in the inter-agency child protection processes."

KCC was criticised recently after failing to heed warnings about a violent father, Christopher Sellman, who killed his 25-day old baby Tiffany.

However, social services chiefs insist everything is being done to ensure child protection is not compromised by staff shortages.

Helen Davies, director of specialist childrens services at KCC, said that despite the difficulties, safeguarding vulnerable children was a top priority.

"The [recruitment] situation is not unique to Kent," she said. "We are fortunate that the county council is putting more resources in as recognition of the increase in child referrals and the numbers with child protection plans.

"It is difficult to recruit to all these new posts at the moment and we are doing what we can to get staff from overseas and fill our vacancies with temporary staff. Our managers are exercising sound judgement about those children who are a priority and continue to do so."

She acknowledged that staff shortages were "putting pressure on staff and managers as we are trying to pinpoint priority work" and that it was "not ideal" that some vacancies were being filled by temporary locum staff.

"We are dealing with around 20,000 referrals a year and have about 1,200 children needing protection plans, which is a massive amount to deal with," she said.