The council report to go before councillors today warns one in 200 youngsters in the borough aged under 18 is deemed to be at risk of abuse or neglect. A total of 317 children are on the register.

Problems were first raised in the authority's annual independent performance assessment which suggested nearly a quarter of children on the register had not been allocated a social worker. It raised the problem of staff shortages and said childcare procedures were "out of date and inaccurate".

The council has appointed extra staff to tackle the backlog of cases and will be interviewing for 12 more social workers next month.

A number of actions plans have been put in place.

The report, which goes before the Children and Young People's Overview and Scrutiny Committee, says the borough's Duty and Assessment service is overstretched partly because of staff shortages and also because it is receiving too many referrals which would be more appropriately dealt with elsewhere.

Jim Board, the Doncaster branch secretary of the public service workers' union Unison, said he believed the current problems were created by a corporate restructure three years ago and a failure to retain skilled and experienced staff.

Doncaster Council says recruiting social workers was a national problem.

Interim director of Social Services, Dr Paul Gray, said: "Ensuring the safety of vulnerable children and young people in Doncaster is of utmost importance. Owing to acute staff shortages across key skilled areas - in particular social work - significant pressure on services have been evident.

"We have recently addressed this by recruiting 10 more frontline staff. This will improve further as we are interviewing for 12 more staff at the beginning of September.

"The number of children currently without a full plan is in single figures and this is only because two members of staff left unexpectedly. The cases are being allocated to other qualified social workers and the number will be nil in the next week or so.''

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