Children's minister Tim Loughton used a speech at the Conservative Party Conference tonight to champion the importance of social workers.

"I have enormous respect for social workers," he said at a fringe event called the Family Room reception hosted by a coalition of charities.

"My job is to free up the time of social workers to enable them to spend more time with families, rather than sitting in front of computers filling in forms," said Loughton.

"It is one of the most supportive speeches of social workers that I've heard from a minister in a long time," said Corinne May-Chahal, interim co-chair of the College of Social Work.

"Tim Loughton came to a fringe event organised by a coalition of children and family voluntary organisations, sponsored by Mothercare, where the focus could have been, as it was at the Labour and Liberal Democrats conference, on the voluntary sector and the Big Society. But Tim Loughton acknowledged the importance of, and spent most of his time talking about, social work."

"He was balanced and knowledgeable and stressed the importance of focusing on evidence-based practice," she added.

Loughton spoke about his week on the frontline with social workers in Stockport.

He described visting a family of four children living in "the worst squalor I have ever seen, with no food, no furniture, four mattresses on the floor and clothes and rubbish everywhere". Loughton told how one of the children had been repeatedly sent home from school with toothache over the last three weeks but the mother had done nothing. Yet, when she got toothache she phoned the emergency dentist on the same day, but didn't think to ask about her son, he explained.

"I told the social worker afterwards that I would have no hestitation taking the children into care, but the problem is the mum dotes on the children and the kids dote on the mum. Social workers really are making the judgements of Solomon," said Loughton.