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Councils are launching a recruitment campaign to tempt retired social workers back into the profession.
The Local Government Association will attempt to lure 5,000 people who have left social work over recent years back to their positions to help tackle child abuse and neglect.
The LGA has expressed fears that cases like Baby P may worsen the shortage of social workers across the country.
Baby P died at 17 months in 2007 in Haringey after a series of abuses.
The young boy had been seen on numerous occasions by social workers who had failed to take adequate action to protect him.
The LGA said that case and others had caused a wave of departures from social work and meant that it is now more difficult to attract new candidates.
A report, 'Respect and protect', said this added to the risk that incidents of child abuse could be missed.
"The fallout from the devastating case of Baby P is still being felt," stated the report.
"Historical evidence shows that as respect for child social workers declines, people who were looking at child protection as their chosen career think again.
"Many long-standing experienced professionals may also decide enough is enough and leave.
"Just when we need to be tightening the safety net to do our best never to repeat the mistakes that contributed to the death of Baby P there becomes an increased danger that the gaps widen as people decide it's time to get out."
Richard Kemp of the LGA said that the shortage of social care workers presented a "major problem".
"Of the 580 professions we employ in local government, children's social service workers are the hardest to recruit and the hardest to retain," he told the BBC.
"There is the respect agenda. Social workers are vilified. If they take children away, they are fascists. If they leave them, they are lily-livered Guardian readers. The fact is, you can't win."
He claimed that the public only get to hear about the problems and not "heroic efforts" being made each day.
And he called for more support to help social workers, especially with increasing levels of bureaucracy.
"They also need somewhere to go back and talk to people. They need to unburden," Kemp added.
He also criticised 'supersize' children's departments, which he said were not conducive to effective care.
Kemp called on the government to reduce the levels of bureaucracy in an effort to coax people back into the job.
But Helga Pile from Unison told the BBC that the problems of excessive workloads also needed to be tacked.
"Of course that is a factor that means that everybody fears them taking their eye off the ball in relation to a particular child," she said.
"If this campaign is going to work, people who have left the profession are going to need some real cast iron guarantees that they are going to get a manageable workload and the tools to do the job."
She also criticised the amount of paperwork that social workers are expected to manage.
"It has had a real impact on job satisfaction because people feel that they can make the biggest difference out there in the communities working with children and families," Pile said.
"It is a real frustration that you are spending all that time on paperwork."
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