Is Birmingham a dangerous place to be a child?

The death of Keanu Williams in 2011 was one of a number of high-profile cases in Birmingham

After the high profile deaths of several children in Birmingham, and subsequent damning reports into the way the city council cares for children, how is the authority changing how it works?

Last March, the government appointed former health minister Lord Norman Warner as external commissioner to oversee the running of children's services. Ministers have had his progress report since April, but will not say when it will be released.

One young woman's experience of being in the care of the authority saw her being moved 39 times in just five years and raped several times while in care.

Danielle, who has waived her right to anonymity, was taken into care in 1998 at the age of 11, after slash marks from a belt were spotted on her back when she changed for PE at school.

She told BBC Inside Out West Midlands the first of the 39 moves she went through saw her transferred six times in the first six weeks.

"I don't think any of us ever felt safe," Danielle, who is now in her 20s, said.

"Half of us ran away because it was safer to run away than to be in the home sometimes."

When she was 11 years old, she said, someone tried to rape her in the children's home she was staying in and aged 13 she ran away.

"[I] got tricked into going to this flat and I got locked in.

"Then he started calling people and they kept me there for hours and I got gang raped. They locked me in a cupboard and wouldn't let me go."

By the time she left the care system at the age of 16, Danielle had been raped three times.

As she left in 2003, a new director of children's services was appointed in Birmingham.

Peter Hay said he accepted the council has not heeded several warnings

Peter Hay inherited a zero-rated service that was already on a government watch list, where it has remained.

"The first stage I think was to stop the thing falling off a cliff," he said.

But high-profile cases have continued to come, including those of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who starved to death at her home in Handsworth in 2008, and Keanu Williams, who in 2011 was found collapsed in his mother's partner's flat.

Their deaths are among 23 serious case reviews published in Birmingham since the Local Safeguarding Board's inception in 2006.

Between 2009 and October 2013, the authority had four different strategic directors of Children, Young People and Families.

Mr Hay, who was in charge until 2006, before returning to oversee the department in 2013, said at the time of Keanu's death the council had been going through "an eight-year period of sustained failure" in spite of the previous warnings.

Ofsted branded the service a "national disgrace" after the boy's death.

The government warned the authority it was considering taking over the running of the department, but instead appointed Lord Warner.

Four months after he started, a new, integrated agency hub was created to speed up the safeguarding process.

Birmingham Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (Mash) is based inside the council's headquarters and is made up of many organisations, including police, social workers and the NHS.

Christine Wellington, Mash head of service, said: "Pre-Mash there was no feedback, there was almost the sense of 'what's the point of referring if nothing is going to be done?'."

Now, when a safeguarding call comes in, it takes priority and the various agencies get together to discuss what action to take.

But one social worker who has worked for the council on more than one occasion - in 2012 and again this year - said his experiences had put him off going back.

The new combined safeguarding hub was set up four months after Lord Warner was appointed external commissioner

The man, who wanted to remain anonymous, said during his most recent time there, managers were being sacked, asked to leave and resigning, on a weekly basis.

He said he was "fearful of a child death or a serious incident happening on my watch and I want to be able to sleep at night".

The council has said a recruitment crisis in the department has been turned around - in contrast to May last year, when more than a quarter of frontline social worker posts were unfilled.

Social worker Siobhan Patton said her case load is the lowest it has ever been, down from 30 to 10.

And she said that was a big change from her "lowest point" - working from 06:00 until midnight.

Despite the council having to save millions of pounds from several departments, the authority has invested £30m in children's services over the past two years, which Mr Hay said was "a real sign of that commitment to make this the number one service the council provides".

'A Dangerous Place To Be a Kid?' is available on the BBC iPlayer.