Social workers came under fire following the death of Baby Peter. Ben Schofield looks at the knock-on effect in Liverpool

“We can see a direct correlation between all the massive publicity of the Haringey case and the increase of children with a child protection plan and the number of Looked After Children.”

BUT she said that the spike seen this year does not necessarily mean new children and families have come to light. “They’re not new children, they’re not children social workers knew nothing about.

“They’re children social workers were working with in their family.

“But there’s a feeling that the risks were too high and that people are less willing to take those sorts of risks.

“People have reassessed the families that they were dealing with and said that the public would not accept that level of risk.”

Mrs Campbell said the decision to take a child into care is never taken lightly.

Social workers have to weigh up both their duty to protect the child and to keep him or her with their family.

Every time the council wants to take a child from their family, it has to convince a court to issue an order allowing them to.

It is also very expensive. Full time foster care costs £800 per week and a place in a residential care home is £2,000 per week.

The majority of children are placed with foster families.

The childcare team is projected to burst its £11m annual budget by £250,000 this year.

AND to cope with the increased workload the city is taking on 38 new social workers, at a cost of around £1.7m. That includes 13 newly-created posts and filling in 25 vacancies in the department.

More than 120 social workers have applied for the posts and the council is due to finish the recruitment soon.

Mrs Campbell said the new staff will be kept busy as she believes the level of referrals will remain high as teachers, the police and the public are now more vigilant and willing to come forward with concerns.

The council has also placed a social worker in St Anne Street police station to assess referrals as they come in from the front line.

She said: “If you train up hundreds and hundreds of other staff in other agencies you’re going to get more referrals because there are children out there who should have been referred.

“I’ve a feeling that the number of referrals won’t go down again. If the elected members thought that the numbers were just linked to the publicity about one case, they wouldn’t have put the extra resources in.”

Cllr Ron Gould, the council’s executive member for health, care and safeguarding, said: “There is more of a spotlight than ever on the crucial role of social workers. There is no doubt that they are special people who perform a very difficult job protecting the most vulnerable.

“We recognise we need more of them, which is why we are investing additional resources in keeping our young people safe, and supporting struggling families who need a helping hand.”