Junior social workers are regularly being given complex child and adult protection cases to manage amid concerns over workloads, unions have claimed.

The claim comes a day after The Herald revealed concerns that thousands of child sexual exploitation cases may be being missed.

Experts fear that unless efforts are made to ensure frontline workers in social work and policing have the experience and skills to spot children who are being abused or exploited, cases will continue to be overlooked.

Last year Glasgow social workers threatened to strike over child protection workloads and stress.

Professor Alexis Jay and Scotland's Care Inspectorate have warned it would be a mistake to assume this country does not have similar levels of sexual exploitation as have been found elsewhere in the UK. Professor Jay, who wrote a damning report into hundreds of cases of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, said frontline social workers and police might need additional training to help identify victims.

However, Unison Scotland and the Scottish Association Of Social Workers say child protection work is instead regularly being handed to the most inexperienced members of local authority social work teams.

Mandy McDowall, chairwoman of Unison's social work issues group, said: "Social workers are expressing big concerns that junior staff, sometimes still unqualified, are having to work on cases they are not ready for or equipped for."

Ms McDowall said local authorities striving for savings had seen many senior social workers depart on redundancy packages. She added: "A lot of councils have stripped out a lot of people with experience, so they are losing that particular expertise that comes with not just age but practice."

This means junior social workers not only have to pick up cases they are not equipped to deal with, but have to do so with limited support and guidance, she said.

"The workload does not go down or diminish. We would back the call for more training and the Scottish Government should gather evidence about workloads in child protection."

Trisha Hall, Scottish Association Of Social Workers manager, said "Most local authorities do their utmost to make sure people are trained and supported, but there are not enough people to do the work. It is not uncommon for a newly qualified social worker to be doing a child protection investigation within a month."

Professor Jay, whose Rotherham report revealed more than 1400 children had been abused over a 16-year period in the town, said there was no reason to be confident similar levels of abuse were not happening in Scotland's towns and cities.

A Care Inspectorate report, discussing child sexual exploitation, said it "highlighted the need for closer investigation into whether services are failing to identify children at risk of sexual abuse". The organisation's chief executive Annette Bruton said: "It would be a serious mistake to assume Scotland is immune from the type of exploitation we sadly see elsewhere."

A spokesman for the Convention Of Scottish Local Authorities said there had been a push on child protection through the coordinated efforts of councils, police, health and other agencies in recent years.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "The Minister For Children And Young People (Aileen Campbell) will be meeting the chief executive of the Care Inspectorate to discuss the report and what can be done to ensure we make Scotland the best place to grow up.

"Key capabilities in child care and protection have been embedded, following their launch in 2006, within all social work degree courses in Scotland. These ensure all qualified social workers are aware of their roles and responsibilities in respect of children and young people. Every student prior to qualifying is assessed in relation to child care and protection at key stages of their learning."