More than 300 at-risk children were left for months without a social worker at a crisis-hit council.

Whistleblower Dorcas Taylor says it is “only luck” that a child abuse tragedy has not already happened there.

She accused an improvement team brought in at Herefordshire Council of “running around like headless chickens”.

Dorcas, who was a temporary service manager with the council until two weeks ago, said children at high risk had been left without intervention.

She has been unable to sleep for fear a child will suffer the same fate as tragic Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, six.

He died in June 2020 after a campaign of abuse by stepmum Emma Tustin and dad Thomas Hughes after social workers in Solihull failed to intervene.

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In Hereford, Dorcas, 61, repeatedly emailed senior staff about her “serious and significant” concerns.

She says: “I’ve never seen anything so dangerous, or so upsetting.

“We could absolutely be looking at the next Arthur. I think it’s more good luck than management that there hasn’t been a death. There will be children being physically, sexually, emotionally harmed, and exploited, and we’ve not been there to intervene.

“These children hadn’t been seen at all, one of them since September.

“There were others who hadn’t been seen since December.”

Government adviser Gladys Rhodes White was drafted in last year after a High Court judge slated the state of Herefordshire’s children’s social work as “shocking”.

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