by political editor Paul Francis

Vital services to safeguard some of the county's most vulnerable children are getting better, say inspectors.

Ofsted says Kent County Council has tackled all of the areas of concern highlighted in a damning report issued a year ago that labelled services for children at risk as inadequate.

In particular, the council has made significant progress in recruiting social workers and reducing the number of unallocated cases.

The findings follow an unannounced inspection conducted by Ofsted last month, which re-examined how well the authority was safeguarding children.

ofsted's other findings

more work needs to be done to lift standards in the county's primary schools, says ofsted's annual assessment of kcc's children's services.

the issue is identified as a key area of improvement, although the ofsted assessment says standards achieved by 11-year-olds are in line with similar areas and the country overall.

ofsted singles out as strengths early years and childcare provision, saying it has improved well, as well as secondary school standards, with improvements in the overall effectiveness of secondaries, with most either good or outstanding.

cllr mike whiting, cabinet member for education, said: "early years and childcare has also improved, with the large majority of provision in nurseries and primary school for under-fives rated good and some are outstanding."

However, the report's conclusions have come too late to be considered as part of Ofsted's wider verdict on children's services, including school standards. In its annual assessment of councils, KCC is rated as performing poorly overall.

Despite this, social services chiefs will be relieved their efforts to improve the way they look after children at risk has been recognised.

A three-page report on the unannounced inspection, published today, indicates improvements across almost all the areas Ofsted as key priorities in 2010.

At the same time, the council has been told to take steps to ensure the improvements can be sustained and has been warned the quality of some assessments remains too variable.

The progress will come as welcome news for KCC, which was stung by the highly critical report and ploughed millions of pounds into a package of measures to remedy the failings.

Chief inspector Pietro Battista said: "All areas for development identified at the previous inspection of contact, referral and assessment arrangements in August 2010 have been tackled and most have improved to a satisfactory standard, although many are yet to be consolidated."

On the backlog of unallocated cases, where children at risk had not been assigned a dedicated social worker, Ofsted says "significant progress has been made".

Earlier this year, KCC revealed that at the height of the crisis, the backlog had reached 2,700. That is now down to a handful.

Ofsted says KCC is now making "timely" assessment of the risks and needs of children at risk. At the same time, it says this improvement needs to be sustained and over the year, "the timeliness of core assessments remains low".

It also says the system for recording cases remains inefficient but KCC is in the process of replacing it.