Volunteers with no experience of social work are successfully being used in a groundbreaking scheme to help the families of children on the at-risk register.

Two trials conducted over the past three years have led to the removal from the register of all the children involved, The Times has learnt. Crucially, the children have remained off the register. Nationally, two thirds of children who are taken off it are put back on again.

Volunteers in Child Protection, which is based on a similar project in California, has been piloted in Bromley and Sunderland with 33 volunteers helping 102 children and 43 parents. The children were on the register for a range of reasons, including physical and sexual abuse, and neglect.

The success of the scheme has come to light as the ability of social services to keep children safe is again being questioned. This week it emerged that social workers failed to visit the family of Khyra Ishaq in Birmingham in the months before she died, apparently from starvation. Berthe Climbié, the mother of Victoria, who died after abuse by her great aunt eight years ago, also criticised local authorities for failing to learn the lessons of her daughter’s death.

Community Service Volunteers (CSV), the charity that runs the new scheme and recruits and trains the volunteers, said that it was thrilled by the results and was now in negotiations with several other interested local authorities.

The volunteers are primarily there to support the parent with the stress of having their children on the register and under threat of being taken into care. They can establish more stability by helping the parents to manage a heavy schedule of meetings with schools, social workers and health professionals, attending parenting classes and ensuring that the children go to school or nursery.

They help to organise a routine at home, with regular meal times for the whole family, and slots for homework, playtime and television. They help parents to develop strategies to manage children’s bad behaviour without losing their temper or resorting to violence.

Crucially, they get parents to rehearse what they want to say to social workers while remaining calm. Social workers would ultimately decide whether to take the children into care or off the at-risk register.

After the end of the pilot projects last year and an independent evaluation by academics, Lewisham council in South London has signed up. A second large local authority is in negotiations for the scheme, which covers not only children already on the at-risk register but those considered likely to be placed on it.

Jean Pardey, the CSV official who oversees the project, said that the volunteers were a total cross-section. “They are all very different. They range in age from their twenties to their sixties. They include a grandmother whose family are grown up and off her hands to a young guy who wants something really interesting to do and make a contribution, and there are professionals who have taken early retirement or want a change,” she said.

“What we ask for is a commitment to at least a year, that people can dedicate four hours a week at times to suit the family, usually the afternoons or evenings. And they have to be open-minded. Neglect of children is a significant issue in child protection and some of the families are very chaotic.

“One of the key things for success is the ability to help the mother, usually, to start doing things for herself. That is a subtle skill. We have worked hard to make sure that we don’t create dependency on the volunteer, so that the family is helped to work out its own solutions.”

As well as improving the lives of parents and children, Volunteers in Child Protection provides a considerable cost saving for local authorities. The extensive meetings between police, school, doctor and social workers that have to take place when a child goes on the register, even if they have been on before, costs £40,000.

Critics of the present child-protection system say that social workers should be responsible for this sort of long-term help. Many social workers say that they would love to be able to do this but do not have the time or resources and have to focus on preventing the most severe cases of abuse.

Last year 33,300 children were placed on the at-risk register.

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