290 at-risk SA kids still waiting on safety checks

Police and social workers still need to check on about 290 at-risk children identified in a top-level report to government last month.

Police and social workers are yet to check on about 290 at-risk children identified in a top-level report to government last month, Police Commissioner Grant Stevens has revealed.

Giving an update on the operation, Mr Stevens told ABC Radio Adelaide that 45 per cent of the 526 vulnerable children flagged for attention had received a visit so far.

The operation was sparked on November 9 when a review by former police commissioner Mal Hyde uncovered more than 500 children living in “high-risk” situations.

His review was commissioned following the deaths of two children – Charlie Nowland, 6, and Makai Wanganeen, 7 – earlier this year.

Both children were living with their families but known to government agencies.

SA Police launched Task Force Prime to investigate the two unrelated deaths. No charges have been laid.

On Wednesday Mr Stevens revealed that the 526 children had been identified based on risk factors similar to those little Charlie faced before her death in July, when she was taken to the Lyell McEwin Hospital by paramedics after being found unresponsive at her Munno Para home.

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens speaking at a press conference. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

“There were some analytics run based on the circumstances around Charlie, her profile, if you’d like to call it that,” Mr Stevens said.

“Running that profile across the (government) data holdings indicated there were 526 children ... that required some further investigation in terms of their safety.”

At the time of Charlie’s death SA Police Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams said post-mortem results indicated concerns about the state of Charlie’s health and wellbeing.

She did not confirm the conditions Charlie had been living in but said they were “poor”.

Last month Mr Hyde had said the children identified in his report were found by analysing data on children aged under 10, who were the subject of more than 15 reports to authorities and where red flags had been raised in the past six months.

However, he would not say what factors were putting the children at risk – such as drug or alcohol abuse by parents, domestic violence, poverty or squalor.

When Mr Hyde’s findings were revealed Premier Peter Malinauskas said police would be drafted in to coordinate child protection workers to visit and assess the at-risk families.

Mr Malinauskas has said the child safety checks must be “done methodically and very carefully” and this could take until March, “with the ambition of hopefully doing it sooner than that.”

“This is not a matter of just popping your head in the door and moving on to the next place, this is a big undertaking,” he said.

Premier Peter Malinauskas, flanked by Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Brenton Edwards

The children were already known to the Child Protection Department but Mr Hyde’s report found swifter action was needed to ensure their safety.

Mr Stevens has said two senior officers had been allocated, for an initial period of three months, to co-ordinate the efforts of multiple government agencies to check on the children.

Asked if he was worried about the children who may not be assessed until March, Mr Malinauskas answered simply: “Yes”.

However, he stressed that proper checks took time.

“In the incidents in child protection in the past that have caused so much heartache, and a lot of community concern, we can learn from those incidents in terms of not overlooking tell tale signs (of risk) that should otherwise be obvious to people doing those checks,” he said.

Opposition child protection spokesman Josh Teague. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Brenton Edwards

Opposition child protection spokesman Josh Teague said the government had promised to conduct “rapid welfare checks” on the 500 children but “we now see that child protection is in the slow lane”.

“These are children that are at risk now, we cannot accept the situation in which more children are at risk of dying,” he said.

The Advertiser has launched the Save Our Kids campaign to lobby for changes to better protect at-risk children.