A £250,000 child welfare crisis plan has been implemented amid fears vulnerable youngsters could be placed at risk due to a lack of experienced social workers and a surge in cases.

Blackburn with Darwen Council said it was finding it ‘extremely difficult to recruit experienced social workers’ and fears that measures to protect children could be ‘adversely affected’.

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Urgent plans have been put in place for the council to spend £250,000 to pay for a specialist private sector company to take on 144 cases of children at risk in the borough over the next three months.

County council finance chiefs are also facing a cash crisis over children’s social care, with the authority covering Hyndburn, Ribble Valley, Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale, tackling a £19.7million overspend.

The hefty bill is mainly caused by hiring agency staff to fill vacant posts and agency residential placements being found for youngsters, county council bosses said.

A report to Blackburn with Darwen councillors about the shortfall in social work capacity has been produced in the past week.

In it, Cllr Maureen Bateson, the executive member for children’s services, said: “The number of cases open to children’s social care has risen by 25 per cent in 2016 and additional capacity is needed to manage social worker caseloads.

“Recruitment exercises have demonstrated that it is extremely difficult to recruit experienced social workers and that the quality of agency social workers can be variable.

“Given the urgency of the issue, we have been compelled to contract directly with a specialist company to provide a number of qualified social workers and associated support as an interim measure.

“I would like to stress that our current team of workers are excellent and week after week go above and beyond their duties to ensure the safety and welfare of children.

“The additional resources will enable them to have manageable caseloads and continue their work protecting children and families.”

Due to the recruitment issues, 40 per cent of the borough’s social workers are in their first year in practice.

The private contract will cover cases of vulnerable children living in the community will not include the cases of children in care or with foster parents.

Cllr Bateson said: “Without action, the management of risk around individual children and families could be compromised through the volume of cases currently coming in.

“It has proved difficult to maintain the level of experienced social workers that are needed and given further turnover of staff it has remained hard to recruit.

“If this is not addressed, there is the potential for the quality of the work undertaken, its timeliness and its effectiveness to be adversely affected.

“In my opinion an underlying reason for the increased number of cases is that due to central government austerity cuts, many early intervention services dealing with child welfare have been cut back so we are perhaps seeing an increase in families entering the social care system.”

The 144 Blackburn with Darwen cases have already been passed on with the service being fully operational from January 30.

The service will mean external, experienced social workers holding and managing cases, together with off-site administrative support.

A British Association of Social Workers spokesman said: “Our understanding is that there is a shortage of experienced staff, rather than newly-qualified social workers.

“What we have also found on occasion is that people are leaving social work positions, only to return later as independent employees, through an agency for example.

“We are also finding, due to the pressures of work, that people are tending to leave and only have a shelf life of around eight years.”

A Local Government Association (LGA) peer review last month on children’s services in Blackburn with Darwen concluded that urgent action needed to be taken to ensure the continued effectiveness of the service and maintain risk at acceptable levels.

David Niven is a former chair of the British Association of Social Workers and is the independent chair on several local safeguarding children’s boards.

He said the media portrayal of social workers played a role in putting people off entering and remaining in the profession.

He said: “There is a national problem of the recruitment of experienced social workers.

“I’m aware of authorities attempting to recruit from as far away as Canada, the USA and South Africa.

“At any one time up to 55,000 children in England are the subject of child protection plans and caseloads have risen.

“I have no problem with bad practice being scrutinised but years of negative portrayal of social workers and the translation into public perception means many leave the profession.”

The county council’s financial difficulties comes on top of extra spending allocated when children’s social care was criticised by Ofsted in 2015.

Neil Kissock, the county’s financial resources director, said in a report: “The particular area of concern is in relation to agency residential placements, as demand seems to be particularly high in this area.”

The number of placements has increased from 135 in November 2015 to 225 by last November.

Around £4.4million is being spent on extra staffing costs, including hiring agency workers to fill vacant posts in the children’s social care department and additional support following the Ofsted inspection.