External experts will be increasingly called in to support weak or failing children's social care services as part of Department for Education (DfE) interventions, government papers seen by The MJ have revealed.

The DfE vision could be used as a blueprint for the Government's wider approach to council improvement, a possibility strengthened by communities secretary Eric Pickles' plans to explore how the Local Government Association's improvement budget could be opened up to competition from 2016/17, as exclusively revealed by The MJ before Christmas.