More than 180 teachers, social workers and other council staff were sacked last year after being judged to be a risk to children, a Sky News investigation has found.
In 2012/13 some 3,651 local authority workers were investigated over allegations they had either harmed or abused children or were unsuitable to work with them, figures show.
The statistics – obtained following Freedom of Information requests to councils in England and Wales – show that 695 of those local authority probes were then investigated by police.