City failing children's social services department is to be put into a trust, it has been announced, in the week a damning behind-the-scenes documentary is due to air.
The Department for Education, which has been closely monitoring the struggling service over the last few years, has decided that, following discussions with the Labour-run council, a voluntary trust should run social care in Birmingham.
It is a management model which has previously been rejected by some Labour councillors as "privatisation" of the service.
But now, it appears there is no option, despite the service being two thirds of the way through a three-year improvement plan drawn up by former government troubleshooter Lord Warner.
And it comes amid the fall out from the tragic death of Keegan, also known as Shi-Anne, Downer - the 18-month-old girl who was battered to death by the foster mum with who she had been placed by Birmingham social services. A serious case review into the death is ongoing.
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The service has been rated as inadequate since 2009 and been through six senior managers in that time.
The announcement has also been brought forward ahead of a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation due to be screened this Thursday which, it is thought, does not put the service in a good light.
A council statement said: "As part of Birmingham City Council's improvement journey, it is the intention to move to a new model of children's services - a voluntary trust.
"We are now at the start of the third year of our agreed improvement journey plan and it is acknowledged by our children's services commissioner that expected progress has been made.
"Key to this has been putting families at the centre of social work. It is now the time to consider a model that has social workers at its centre.
"This is something we have been discussing for some time with the Department for Education and this is the next logical step on our improvement journey.
"In moving to the next phase, Birmingham City Council and the Department for Education are committed to working together, along with our members, staff, partners and trades unions, on details of how the trust will operate."
It added that a full proposal would be put to cabinet following the consultation.
The move has been welcomed by opposition Conservative children's services spokesman Matt Bennett, who was in charge of the service in 2011/12 .
He said: "It is disappointing that the efforts made to improve safeguarding have not been sufficient but it does not come as a surprise to me.
"The culture within Birmingham children's services is so deeply damaged that I simply don't think it was ever possible to change it from within the council - many have tried and failed over the last few years.
"However, this latest development is rather at odds with the report received last year which gave a rather more positive spin on the 'improvement journey'.
"We called for greater transparency at same meeting so we could have greater assurance things were going as well as we were told they were but our motion was voted down by Labour."
He pointed out the Conservatives, as recently as the March council budget meeting, tabled a proposal for the service to be placed in trust but this was voted down by Labour and denounced as "privatisation".
"Whatever model we have and whoever is responsible for delivering it, there will still be a huge amount of work to do to turn things around," he added.
"We must have greater openness and transparency going forward so that performance can be properly scrutinised and challenged and we must put ideology about 'public vs private' to one side.
"If it makes our children safer, I don't really care who employs the social workers. "I hope that, by moving children's social care away from the broken culture of Birmingham City Council, we can at last begin to make our children and young people safer."
Watch: West Midlands Police released this video of little Keegan in happier times.
