BBC Mar 10, 2010

Baby P died after months of abuse despite being monitored by officials

Rules to improve child protection in the wake of the Baby P case may leave children more at risk, council leaders have warned.

Lord Laming's report last year included a series of recommendations to make children in England safer.

But social workers say they are being overworked because of a huge increase in paperwork, research for the Local Government Association suggests.

The LGA is calling for reduced bureaucracy to focus instead on care.

The Loughborough University study said social workers had seen their workloads increase significantly since the death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly. This rise was said to be partly due to a rise in referrals and new regulations.

Children who are at risk, and families which are struggling, will benefit more from additional time with experienced social workers than they will from an increase in the number of forms filled in about them Shireen Ritchie, LGA

Lord Laming's recommendation that every child protection referral to councils from other professionals should lead to a "formal initial assessment" was particularly focused on by the study.

Researchers found that around 2,000 extra social workers would be needed at a cost of £75m a year to fully implement this recommendation.

They said only 13% of the time taken to complete an initial assessment is spent with the child or family but 87% is spent on paperwork and process.

'Allow discretion'

A LGA spokeswoman told the BBC News website that this recommendation was not happening in many of the councils because they did not have enough social workers.

The LGA is instead calling for social workers to be given more power to process referrals using their "own discretion" and for the compulsory formal initial assessment to be scrapped.

It wants all professionals to record information in the same way to reduce information having to be cross-checked. It also says the police and health services should play a greater role in making decisions about a child's needs.

It says the paperwork for the official guidelines for child protection should be reduced.

Shireen Ritchie, chairwoman of the LGA's children and young people board, said: "The aim of this research is to help turn well-meaning proposals into practices which strengthen the safety net which keeps children safe from harm."

She continued: "Children who are at risk and families which are struggling will benefit more from additional time with experienced social workers than they will from an increase in the number of forms filled in about them.

"Some paperwork is essential to doing the best possible job but it is right to try to reduce bureaucracy where it can ease the pressure on social workers and increase the quality of care offered to children."

A total of 46 authorities in England out of 152 contacted responded to a survey by the university. The research was commissioned in September last year.

Haringey Council was severely criticised following the death, after sustained abuse, of Peter Connelly.

He had been on the at-risk register and had received 60 visits from social workers, doctors and police over the eight months before his death in Tottenham, north London, in August 2007.