A lack of out-of-hours social work staff at Dumfries and Galloway Council is putting children's services at significant risk.
The council's chief social work officer Beth Smith highlighted the problem in a report on emergency out-of-hours social work. She said increasing numbers of social work staff are exempt from out-of-hours work, including children's admission to care and child protection investigations.
Smith said: "The out-of-hours service has to be modernised so that we can better support those social workers who need to undertake emergency duty."
