A team of experts is to advise Plymouth City Council in October

Plymouth City Council admitted its Children and Families Service Department had "sunk as far as it can go" after government inspectors issued a highly critical report which found some children on the at-risk register in the city did not have an allocated social worker.

The council hopes a team of consultants due to arrive later in the year will help bring about radical improvements.

But the local branch of public sector workers' union, Unison, said the involvement of such teams in other parts of the country have only led to more cutbacks.

Tackling problems

The critical report came from the Social Services Inspectorate, which visited Plymouth in May.

It concluded the Children's Service was not serving people well.

However, the report did say it was happy with the way the authority was aiming to tackle the problem.

Councillor Chris Pattison, who is responsible for social services, said: "The government is saying our plans are good, our management is good and our leadership has taken us into a new direction and taking us forward.

The number of children without social workers has been halved

"We're in a process to trying to turn this ship around to take us from where we are today and taking us to where we want to be, which would be a two-star authority in two years' time and excellent in three."

Since the report was compiled, the number of non-allocated children has halved. But it is still considered to be a very serious problem.

But the branch chair of UNISON, Tony Staunton, said several years worth of cuts to the social services budget are really to blame.

He said: "The reality is that children's services are in such a terrible state because there aren't the resources in place in Plymouth."

The consultancy team is due to arrive in October and the council hopes to see improvements within six months.