COUNCIL chiefs are urging the likes of schools, hospitals and police to help keep more children out of care - insisting they must "follow the same plan" to get the numbers down.

Councillor John Campion, the Conservative in charge of children's services, has issued a rallying call to public sector leaders by insisting only a county-wide effort will ease the pressure.

As your Worcester News revealed last week, an extra £10.4 million has had to be sunk into putting children into care since 2010, with the numbers standing at 716, a record high.

An independent review earlier this year warned about social workers' caseloads being too high, insisting they need to come down.

Councillor Campion, who sits in the Tory cabinet, said: "Social care is an area where we've ploughed in significantly more money, I reported earlier this year how we'll have to put in an extra £5.8 million this year.

"We've worked very hard to ensure our recruitment is up and our permanent staff is around the 80 per cent mark (with the rest agency workers) compared to around 60 per cent 12-18 months ago.

"We've really had to make sure the workforce is permanent and stable and any future reductions are off the table, there's no plans for that to happen.

"But it is a 'system problem', anybody that thinks that keeping young people safe in Worcestershire is solely a job for the county council is very much mistaken.

"There's a role for schools, roles for health professionals, roles for the police, fire and ambulance services.

"We've got to ensure all of these are singing from the same hymn sheet and following the same plan."

The council has 118 full-time equivalent staff working as frontline children's social workers now, 84 per cent of the available roles.

It means some 24 jobs are now filled by temporary agency staff, the lowest for some years.

We reported last week how Simon White, the interim director for the service, has called the £10.4 million extra spend on children in care "incredible" compared to the general context of public spending cuts.

The placements are expected to cost taxpayers around £35.2 million for the 2015/16 financial year, ending in March.

He believes the only way of bringing the overall figure down is to focus on getting more children out of the system.