About 500 children have been found to be at risk of neglect and abuse in homes across South Australia.

November 9, 2022

Hundreds of children remain at risk of neglect and abuse in homes across South Australia, a child protection report has found.

Premier Peter Malinauskas warned more neglected children could die, with the SA government accepting all but one of 34 recommendations made in two reviews following four child deaths in recent years.

These include immediately conducting a multi-agency welfare check of the 500 other children identified in “particularly high-risk settings” by the Hyde report.

“It is a harrowing to think that there are children out there that are not getting the love and affection that they deserve,” Mr Malinauskas said on Wednesday.

“Child protection is a complex and highly challenging area of public policy – and that is laid bare in these two reports.

“Clearly, on the basis of Mr Hyde’s report, there have been failings.”

Former police commissioner Mal Hyde examined the circumstances surrounding the deaths of seven-year-old Makai in February and six-year-old Charlie in July.

Mr Malinauskas said two children were removed from dangerous situations on average per day and the Department for Child Protection received thousands of notifications about others per month.

He warned that the “complexities” of protecting children would remain, and answered “no” when asked if he was confident no more neglected children would die.

“I don’t stand here as the premier making false promises that there will never be things that go wrong in the area of child protection because there is likely to be,” he said.

“Charlie and Makai’s cases have alerted everybody to the possibility that there is criminal neglect out there … There may be tragedies again in the future.”

A child protection expert group will also be established to ensure the authorities understand and prioritise child neglect cases.

It will be monitored by a government oversight committee, led by the Department of Premier and Cabinet, which will also ensure the Hyde report’s recommendations are implemented along with those of another review by child protection expert Kate Alexander.

“We must always strive to improve our child protection system and Mr Hyde and Ms Alexander’s reports provide important recommendations for further improvement,” Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard said.

Ms Alexander assessed the status of all previous coronial and other recommendations relating to child protection, which was a recommendation from the coronial inquest into the deaths of Amber Rose Rigney and Korey Lee Mitchell in 2016.

“The deaths of Charlie and Makai were a tragedy and we owe it to them and to the thousands of children in SA who live with domestic violence, mental ill health, substance misuse and intergenerational trauma to do everything we can to try to make things better,” Ms Hildyard said.

Ms Alexander’s report Trust in Culture was released on Wednesday but the government declined to make Mr Hyde’s report available to the public amid fears it could jeopardise ongoing criminal investigations into the two deaths.

Ms Alexander’s recommendation to merge the Department of Human Services’ child protection services into the Department for Child Protection was not accepted.