The City Council will consider two bills aimed at improving the Administration for Children’s Services, an agency reeling from the recent deaths of two children whose cases it was investigating.

One bill would cap at 12 the number of cases a social worker could handle at one time, and a second measure would require the agency to submit monthly reports to the council. The bills were among the dozens introduced yesterday in the council’s first batch of proposed laws and resolutions of the year. Two measures focused on Albany, where leading council members want the state to relinquish control over the city’s rent laws and abide by a court ruling to direct more funding to city schools.

With the recent beating deaths of Nixzmary Brown and Quachaun Brown heightening scrutiny on the city’s child welfare system, the proposals focused on ACS could have the greatest immediate impact.

“I think what’s important is we’re not trying to place blame,” a co-sponsor of the bills, Council Member Helen Foster of the Bronx, said. “What we’re looking to do is assist caseworkers with a job that is already hard.”

The proposals came a day after a council committee hearing in which children’s services officials detailed agency shortcomings leading up to the beating death of 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown. On Monday, police found the body of 4-year-old Quachaun Brown, another child in the agency’s system. The child’s mother and her boyfriend have been charged in his death.

The commissioner of ACS, John Mattingly, has promised changes in how the agency operates, and Mayor Bloomberg last week unveiled $16 million in child welfare reforms, including hiring more caseworkers, supervisors, consultants, and lawyers for ACS.

A spokeswoman for ACS, Sheila Stainback, said the agency was reviewing the proposals and would work with the council. She also said that citywide, the average caseload for agency workers is 12.

In announcing the ACS bills yesterday, the council speaker, Christine Quinn, also signaled that she would be an aggressive advocate in trying to wrest control over the city’s rent and eviction laws from the state. The state has jurisdiction over rent regulation under a 1971 law enacted under Governor Rockefeller. The City Council has passed several resolutions on the issue over the years, and a bill repealing the law has passed the Democratic controlled Assembly each year since 1997, but has stalled in the Senate.

“We remain united and committed to getting that law repealed, because we in the city of New York, we in the City Council, should have full powers over our own housing laws,” Ms. Quinn said.

At yesterday’s stated meeting, the council also approved the redevelopment plan for the Bronx Terminal Market, and passed bills announced last week that are designed to open the council’s amendment process and make the body more transparent.