Two reports on the status of past Coronial and other recommendations relating to child protection have been delivered to the Government and responded without delay.
The reports – examining the deaths of seven-year-old Makai in February and six-year-old Charlie in July conducted by former Police Commissioner Mal Hyde and the deaths of Amber Rose Rigney and Korey Lee Mitchell in 2016 conducted by child protection expert Kate Alexander – were each accepted by the Premier, Peter Malinauskas.
Mr Malinauskas said child protection was a complex and highly challenging area of public policy and the Government was accepting in principle all 31 recommendations outlined in the Hyde report and two of the three recommendations in the Alexander report.
“Every day, dedicated child protection workers are doing their job in very difficult circumstances,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“But we must always examine how we can improve the system and when tragedies occur, we must assess what went wrong,” he said.
Minister for Child Protection, Katrine Hildyard received the two reports saying they provided important recommendations for further improvement.
“The deaths of Charlie and Makai were a tragedy and we owe it to them and to the thousands of children in South Australia 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.
The Government found Ms Alexander’s recommendation to merge the Department of Human Services’ child protection services into the Department for Child Protection as representing a significant change in the machinery of government and would therefore require further consideration.
It has released Ms Alexander’s report Trust in Culture in full but will not publicly release Mr Hyde’s report at the moment due to the possible risk of later investigation.
Ms Alexander’s Report was published in full in PS News at this link last week.
