Pressure has been eased on Birmingham’s overloaded social workers according to the Government troubleshooter sent in to tackle the failing children’s services department.

Birmingham Children’s Commissioner Andrew Christie said more social workers still needed to be hired and their caseloads reduced before any significant improvements could be seen – but progress was being made.

Mr Christie was speaking to the Schools, Children and Families Overview and Scrutiny committee as he marked seven months in the job of overseeing services branded a “national disgrace” after a string of deaths of youngsters in care.

The council is now at the start of the final year of a three-year improvement programme.

In May, the council announced it was going to set up a voluntary trust to run all children’s services in the city.

He said: “I am experiencing a different Birmingham children’s services to the one I first encountered and I can see that progress is being made,” he told the committee.

“It needs to hold onto that, because it’s easy when you’re subject to scrutiny and criticism to feel beleaguered, defensive and that can have an impact on morale.

“But the organisation has still got to maintain a forward-thinking disposition and feel confident of making further progress.”

In a report to the committee, he said the city had now an “experienced and competent” leadership team in place, had allocated money specifically for children’s social services and had, in most parts, reduced social workers’ caseloads.

The committee was told that at one point a social worker had between 20 and 30 families on their books, but that has now been reduced to 16.

The council had also last month undergone an Ofsted monitoring inspection which found “evidence of improvement”.

But Mr Christie also said there were still areas of concern, one of these being that the department was too dependent on agency staff with 23 per cent of staff being from agencies, compared to 16 per cent nationally.

Cabinet member for children's services Brigid Jones

More attention also needed to be paid to children at risk of sexual exploitation, as well as those who had disabilities or with statements for special health or educational needs.

But the biggest threat, he said, was the looming full Ofsted inspection which was due in September which would be “very onerous”.

“Birmingham City Council wants to attain a ‘requiring improvement’ rating, but the recent monitoring inspection indicates the service has not made sufficient progress and so it is much less likely to reach the desired standard,” he said.

He also said he was worried that the city was at risk of letting the setting up of the trust divert it away from its core task of improving the department.

Brigid Jones, Cabinet member for children, families and schools, said they agreed with Mr Christie on what their weaknesses were, but they had to also remember the progress they had made.

And she said they were working towards the setting up of voluntary trust to run children’s services.

The issue would be discussed at Cabinet next Tuesday when they will get more details on the various models of trust they could adopt and were aiming to produce a shortlist of these models by the autumn.

“It’s a huge decision to make and we want to make sure we get it’s worth it,” she said.