Release date: 09/11/22

The State Government has received child protection reports from former Police Commissioner Mal Hyde and child protection expert Kate Alexander and is acting immediately to address the recommendations.

The Hyde report examined the circumstances surrounding two specific cases – the deaths of seven-year-old Makai in February and six-year-old Charlie in July.

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

The State Government is accepting in principle all 31 recommendations outlined in the Hyde report, and 2 of the 3 recommendations in the Alexander report.

Ms Alexander’s recommendation to merge the Department of Human Services’ child protection services into the Department for Child Protection would represent a significant machinery of government change and will require further consideration.

Today the government is releasing Ms Alexander’s report Trust in Culture in full.

Based on legal advice from Crown, advice from SAPOL and advice from Mr Hyde himself, the government is not publicly releasing Mr Hyde’s report so as to not risk jeopardising ongoing criminal investigations into both cases.

Once all other legal processes related to these two cases are complete, the government will release the Hyde report.

After examining the reports and their recommendations, the State Government is committing to the following immediate actions:

  1. The Hyde Review conducted a high level screening exercise to identify other children that are in particularly high-risk settings. Approximately 500 children were identified. SAPOL will co-ordinate a multi-agency effort to check those children’s welfare as quickly as possible.
  2. Establishing a South Australian Child Protection Expert Group, as recommended in the Alexander report. The expert group’s first task is ensuring the prioritisation of cases and an understanding of child neglect, as identified in the Hyde report.
  3. Forming a Chief Executive Oversight Committee, led by the Department of Premier and Cabinet, to ensure all of these actions, and the broader recommendations contained in the reports are co-ordinated and integrated across government.

Quotes

Attributable to Peter Malinauskas

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

Every day, dedicated child protection workers are doing their job in very difficult circumstances.

But we must always examine how we can improve the system and when tragedies occur, we must assess what went wrong.

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

The government received the Hyde report on Monday night and the Alexander report yesterday, Cabinet met this morning and we are acting today.

I want to thank Mr Hyde and Ms Alexander for their work.

Attributable to Katrine Hildyard

We must always strive to improve our child protection system and Mr Hyde and Ms Alexander’s reports provide 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.