THE number of county children being taken into care has risen sharply, putting “significant pressure” on social workers.

Oxfordshire County Council figures show the number of children in care rose from 416 in March 2013 to 519 this month.

It said the rise is due to it taking a more “rigorous” approach to identifying neglect following concern about how it handled some cases.

But a council report said it is putting increased pressure on social workers who are taking on more cases than council guidelines recommend.

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Deputy director of children’s social care Lucy Butler said: “Pressures on children’s social care have risen significantly in recent months.

“Short-term mitigation plans have been put into place, including recruitment of agency workers, to ensure children remain protected.”

The council has acted on concerns raised in serious case reviews, official investigations into how the council handled some cases. In one, a Didcot toddler nearly died from drinking methadone found in her heroin addict mother’s handbag, the report revealed.

And toddler Sarah Dahane was found dead at her Bicester home last May, a day after her mother Angela Whitworth left the country.

An Oxfordshire Safeguarding Children’s Board (OSCB) serious case review report published in August said the death was neither preventable or predictable.

The board recommended that agencies work better together to deal with possible domestic abuse.

Ms Butler said: “This change in numbers reflects a deliberate shift in practice following learning from recent serious case reviews and audits which highlighted the need for ‘decisions not to drift’ in chronic neglect cases.”

Cabinet member for children Melinda Tilley said she was shocked by the increase, which she said was partly in response to recent child sexual exploitation cases such as the Operation Bullfinch investigation in Oxford.

As part of its response to the investigation into child sex grooming in Oxford, the county council has proposed building three new residential children’s homes in Eynsham, Didcot and Thame.

A pilot scheme will be launched in Banbury this year between social workers and other agencies like Thames Valley Police, she said.

“We will work with 100 children from 47 families and try and sort out the families once and for all.

“Some of these families are chaotic and it is a really challenging situation. We want to make sure children don’t come back into care again.

“The idea of working closer together is to lessen workload on social workers and lessen the cost to the public.”

Mrs Tilley said she hoped the new pilot scheme would prevent the need to hire additional permanent social workers.

The biggest rise in looked-after children was among one- to four-year-olds, from 27 last March to 73 this month.

Looked-after children covers all those in foster care, adoption, or in children’s homes.

The council employs 272 children’s social workers, excluding managers, with 5.5 per cent temporary agency staff against a national figure of 12 per cent.

The children’s social care budget has risen from £24m in 2006/7 to more than £40m in 2014/15.

In the last two years the council has invested £1.4m extra in children’s social care to employ 21 new children’s social care workers.

This year the council set workload targets of 14 cases for each staff member working with looked after children, 16 for workers in family support teams and 18 for those in disability teams.

But in August teams dealing with looked-after children were covering up to 17.8 cases on average, family support workers up to 24.2 cases and disability workers up to 26.4.

Ofsted inspectors who visited the council between April 29 and May 21 rated children’s services as “good”.


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