HIGHER salaries and jobs in ‘less demanding’ areas are enticing social workers away from Middlesbrough, a town that has more children in care than anywhere else in the North-East.

Latest figures show that Middlesbrough has 363 ‘looked after' children and another 207 are subject to a child protection plan, of whom 60 per cent have suffered serious neglect.

A review in 2012 showed that the number of children per social worker was high, making caseloads difficult to manage, with two social workers looking after more than 40 children, four with more than 30 and 14 with more than 25.

Staff levels were increased from 87 to 111 and, although the average number of cases is 17.4, holidays, sickness and maternity leave means 27 per cent of social workers are carrying more than 20 cases and 11.4 per are monitoring the welfare of more than 25 youngsters.

While there continues to be a pressure on workloads the system now is more efficient as assessments are now spread across seven teams instead of just two.

The document, Social Work Caseloads 2015, prepared by Middlesbrough Council, states: “Good managers make continuous judgements about caseloads which they keep under review to avoid a mechanic approach to allocating work.”

The report, which will be presented on April 13, concludes: “Whilst retention continues to be a challenge, particularly around two or three years post qualification, the service does not carry significant numbers of vacancies.”

It added: “More recently there has also been some success in recruiting more experienced social workers from other councils. Whilst this has been a positive development there is still a degree of churn as social workers leave Middlesbrough for similar posts with higher salaries or to work in what they perceive to be less demanding authorities.”

The number of 'looked after' children has increased by 12 per cent since 2010, while those subject to child protection plans have dropped dramatically from 335 in 2010.

In 2013/14 Middlesbrough’s rate of Looked After Children (LAC) per 10,000 children in the local authority area was 17 per cent above average when compared with similar authorities and 87 per cent above the national average.

At the moment it costs £1.2m to look after 16 children in care each year and retiring Mayor of Middlesbrough, Ray Mallon, has forecast that three-quarters of the town’s annual budget will be spent on caring for 'looked after' children and a growing elderly population with dementia by 2019/2020.