East Sussex County Council has committed an extra £1m to its children's services to tackle a 33 per cent rise in referrals since November last year.
The authority handles around 10,000 referrals relating to child welfare every year and has 150 social workers. It has already recruited an additional 20 workers, although not all will be working on frontline services.
Meanwhile, West Sussex County Council, which was one of the eight authorities judged as "inadequate" for safeguarding in its Ofsted annual performance assessment, is spending an extra £500,000 on recruiting staff.
It has pledged to boost the recruitment and retention of social workers by offering sponsorship and bursaries to help employees train to become fully qualified social workers, and increasing the starting salary for social workers.
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