Serious failures in Birmingham's Children's Services department are leaving young people at risk of harm, Ofsted has found.
The watchdog said there was not enough focus on children who need help. It again rated the department inadequate.
The department was first handed the rating in 2009.
Birmingham City Council said it "accepted and welcomed" the report and it was already working to address the issues raised.
Ofsted's key findings
Ofsted said the most vulnerable children in Birmingham "continue to be failed".
It cited "long-standing" failures and "inadequate" structures for supporting social workers.
Despite plans to improve safeguarding, Ofsted said there was a "significant an unaccountable delay" in implementing them.
It criticised poor information sharing between various agencies which meant children were left at "significant risk of harm for too long".
But it found the most serious cases involving at-risk children were dealt with quickly, and said there had been "considerable effort" to improve the low employment rate within children's services.
The inspection, which took place in March and April, identified a number of "serious weaknesses" in the authority's social care provision for young people.
'Entrenched failures'Ofsted criticised the "insufficient focus on children who need help and protection", delays in dealing with cases and "long-standing" leadership issues which affected performance.
"The legacy of poor management and practice in Birmingham Children's Services remain," it said.
"These failures have become so entrenched that despite recent efforts to improve management practice and outcomes the progress being made to date is too slow and has had little or no impact."
The authority underperformed as it struggled to fill frontline social worker posts, Ofsted inspectors found.
Analysis
Michael Buchanan BBC News
The most depressing aspect of this report is how familiar and expected it is.
A lack of focus on children, with many left at risk, and a management culture that repeatedly fails its most vulnerable young people is embarrassing in the extreme.
In any other council, heads would roll.
But officials in Birmingham believe too much change and reorganisation is part of the problem.
Therefore they have vowed to tough out this criticism, keep to the plan they have put to the Department for Education and believe that in three years - at the latest - child protection in the city will have noticeably improved.
During the banking crisis, we became familiar with the phrase too big to fail.
We are going to find out if Birmingham is too big to succeed when it comes to protecting its children.
Between October and January, the council closed a "significant number" of children-in-need cases without them being risk assessed due to a lack of social workers.
But inspectors also said staff reported better morale and reduced caseloads.
Brigid Jones, cabinet member for children and family services, said the council had expected the inadequate rating.
"The report's details build on the issues we had recognised ourselves as inadequate practice and which we shared with Ofsted on their arrival," she said.
'Long way to go'Head of children's services Peter Hay said the council accepted the issues facing it and had already begun to address them.
Lord Warner, who was appointed external commissioner for Birmingham's children's services in March, said there had been a "good start" on improvements but there was "a long way to go".
In a letter to Education Secretary Michael Gove, he said a three-year plan outlining a schedule for improvements would be presented to the Department for Education next month.
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