Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard has revealed long-awaited new child safety legislation

A major overhaul of laws meant to keep South Australian children safe has been revealed – and it involves a critical change to mandatory reporting requirements.

The threshold for when teachers, doctors and nurses must report concerns about an at-risk child will be eased to ensure attention goes to the most serious cases.

And predators who attack or sexually abuse vulnerable children knowing they are in state care will face tougher penalties, amid a major shake-up of the state’s child safety laws.

The Advertiser can reveal exclusive details of the long-awaited Children and Young People (Safety and Support) Bill, released publicly on Thursday.

Katrine Hildyard told The Advertiser that the state’s child abuse report line was swamped with more than 100,000 reports last financial year. Picture: Mark Brake.

Child Protection Minister Katrine Hildyard said it makes “transformative” changes to better protect at-risk kids and support struggling families before they reach crisis point, but parts of the Bill will be divisive.

Currently mandatory notifiers, including police, doctors, nurses, teachers, psychologists and priests, are legally required to report any suspicion about a child who “is, or may be, at risk” of harm – or face a fine of up to $10,000.

Ms Hildyard told The Advertiser that “low” threshold meant the state’s child abuse report line was swamped with more than 100,000 reports last financial year.

The new laws raise the threshold to risk of “significant harm”, bringing South Australia into line with NSW, the NT, Queensland and Victoria

Some critics fear the change could mean concerns go unreported and children are left at risk.

However Ms Hildyard – and others – argue the enormous volume of reports currently received mean “significant resources” are spent triaging cases where the involvement of the Department for Child Protection (DCP) is not required.

Instead, a family may need the support of another department or service.

For example, only 39,500 reports last financial year (42 per cent) were deemed to require further investigation by DCP.

‘We want to get to the serious things and to the families as quick as we can.” Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

“We want to get to those families as quickly as we can, we want to get to the serious things,” Ms Hildyard said.

A review released last year found a majority of the 900-plus people who gave feedback on the legislation agreed the threshold should be raised.

However, relatives of children who have died after concerns were flagged about their welfare worry others could be missed if a narrower definition is imposed.

There are about 4800 children living in state care.

The new laws would make it an aggravated offence to assault or sexually abuse or exploit those young people.

It follows revelations last month that 49 people had been charged with a sexual offence against a child in care.

“Those disgusting predators who deliberately target children in care deserve to be severely punished,” Ms Hildyard said.

The Bill also:

EXPANDS:

the definition of harm to include when children are exposed to acts of domestic violence.

CREATES:

a new independent process for investigating complaints about the department.

GIVES:

the Child Protection Minister the power to order heads of government departments to come together to resolve concerns about a specific child.

REQUIRES:

DCP to offer every Aboriginal child a family conference to find ways for them to safely remain with relatives.

Ms Hildyard has faced criticism for taking too long to finalise the Bill, after releasing the results of consultation almost 17 months ago.

She said it will be put out for a final month of public feedback before it is introduced to parliament by the end of the year.