A shortage of social workers, rising caseloads and increasing paperwork are combining to blunt the effectiveness of staff looking after vulnerable children in Kent, a report has found.

The review of KCC’s children social services was ordered after the tragic death of Baby P in Haringey last year.

The Government told all social services authorities to carry out an urgent review of their own arrangements for looking after children at risk.

The report concludes KCC arrangements for children under the care of social workers are safe and comply with "sound professional practice".

The arrangements also incorporate the main recommendations of the Climbie inquiry report - a key requirement of the Government’s review.

However, it warns vacancy rates for social workers in some parts of the county are as high as one in four and that on average, about one in five posts is currently unfilled.

It suggests these vacancies are "a matter of real concern" adding that the situation has "deteriorated over the last year" because of the profession’s poor image in the wake of the Baby P scandal.

Social services chiefs plan to recruit more frontline staff next year using an extra £1.5million earmarked for child protection.

The report also highlights a steady increase in the number of children potentially at risk in Kent. In December 2007, KCC had 903 vulnerable children on its books but last December, that figure had risen to 1,052.

A new system for managing children at risk is also singled out as a cause for concern, with the report saying what is known as the Integrated Children’s System "proving to be a considerable addition to the demands of front-line staff, in marked contrast to what was expected".

As a result, it recommends that a decision to cut administrative support staff is "urgently revisited".

The politician in charge of Kent social services said he was heartened the authority’s arrangements had been given a clean bill of health, but accepted there were concerns over recruitment and paperwork.

Cllr Leyland Ridings (Con), KCC cabinet member for children’s services, also revealed that since the Baby P tragedy, the number of cases taken on in Kent had risen by 30 per cent - a rise he described as "a very significant increase".

On the issue of recruitment, he said: "It is an issue I am concerned about. But we are proposing to spend an extra £1.5million next year and are looking at recruiting an extra 50 to 60 social workers."

He acknowledged that increasing paperwork was putting social workers under even more pressure.

"Under the new system, it takes social workers one day a week just to enter the data on to a computer and it takes one day a week for every single case to process the right amount of information."

The county council was lobbying the Government to find ways to streamline the system, he added.

Last year, a senior social work manager said the system was so cumbersome that case notes for children were being taken to conference meetings in wheelbarrows.