According to Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), the number of open cases at a given point in October was 30,256.
This is a rise of 7.3 per cent on October 2018's figure of 28,202, which was an increase of 11.9 per cent on the previous year.
These cases require more legal work before they can be given an appropriate disposal.
Cafcass recently reported receiving 5.8 per cent fewer new care applications in September 2019 compared to the same month the previous year.
But the service's chief executive Jacky Tiotto said it is still operating "at peak capacity", and she believes that caseload level offers a more accurate measure of this than numbers of new applications.
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