THE pressures faced by Bradford's child social workers will be an issue discussed by a council committee later this year.

Bradford Council's Children's Services Scrutiny Committee discussed the workload of social workers at a meeting last night, but members felt that if they were given more information about their day to day challenges, they would get a better understanding of how they may be able to help.

The committee heard that the council currently looks after 880 children, a drop from 909 in September.

They were also told that on average almost 15 days a year was lost, per social worker, to illness. Although this raised alarm bells with some in the committee, others said there were several things that could skew these figures, such as one member of staff having a long term illness.

The committee asked for more information about the reasons for these absences, and whether it was indicative of the high pressures of being a social worker.

They also requested imformation about problem areas in the district for children being taken into care to be presented at a future meeting.