More than two dozen employees at South Australia’s child protection department have been stood down over eight months, according to Freedom of Information (FOI) documents.
The documents also revealed that as at February 28 this year, there were 12 open investigations into staff as a result of a care concern.
A care concern, or a quality of care report, is a notification to the Child Abuse Report Line where there is a reasonable suspicion that a young person in care has been harmed or is at risk of being harmed.
The FOI documents, which were obtained by the opposition, covered the period between July 1 last year to the end of February this year.
The Department for Child Protection has 2,600 employees.
Alice Rolls says employees can be directed away from work for a variety of reasons. (ABC News: Rory McClaren)
Child Protection Minister Alice Rolls said nine out of the 27 staff stood down were working in frontline services.
“Performance, misconduct, medical incapacity and loss of an essential qualification, are all separate reasons for a staff member to be directed away from work,” she said.
“An essential qualification may refer to a Working With Children Check or a driver’s licence.”
The FOI documents also showed two employees were terminated for misconduct in the same period, while the government said a further two staff members were dismissed after losing their essential qualifications.
Laura Henderson says the FOI findings reinforce the need for a state-based social worker registration scheme. (ABC News: Carl Saville)
Opposition child protection spokesperson Laura Henderson, who submitted the FOI request, said the findings were “gobsmacking”.
“One employee being flagged is one employee too many when you are dealing with children and vulnerable families, like the Department for Child Protection employees are,”
Ms Henderson said.
“To have figures as high as we are seeing should be ringing alarm bells in every single South Australian household.”
Former SA Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People April Lawrie said misconduct by a child protection worker could impact multiple families, depending on their role.
“They may be individual practitioners, but how many children are we talking about?” Ms Lawrie said.
But the minister said the safety and wellbeing of children was the department’s “top priority”.
“We take any allegations of misconduct or breaches of the public sector code of ethics seriously and assess and respond to concerns,” Ms Rolls said.
Calls for registration scheme
Ms Henderson said the number of child protection workers stood down reinforced the need for a state-based social worker registration scheme, which was scrapped by the government last month.
“This puts more pressure on the government, I think, as to why we need a mandatory social worker registration scheme, and we need one now,” she said.
Under the scheme, which was legislated in 2021, only registered social workers or those working under the supervision of a registered social worker would have been permitted to perform comprehensive psychosocial assessments or intervene in high-risk settings, such as where the social worker has authority to remove children.
Organisations would also have been obliged to report complaints about registered social workers and incidents of dismissal to the Social Worker Registration Board (SWRB).
In June, Ms Rolls said a state scheme would make South Australia uncompetitive, create a financial burden for social workers and exacerbate workforce shortages.
Last month’s decision to scrap the scheme prompted a range of responses from stakeholders.
Elizabeth Little says a social worker registration scheme is about protecting children. (ABC News: Ben Pettitt)
Australian Association of Social Workers national president Elizabeth Little said regulation was needed to ensure government agencies were accountable to the public.
“At the moment we don’t know how many people who are working in complex situations in social care industry across Australia have adequate qualifications,”
Ms Little said.
“It’s important to recognise that a scheme like this was actually about safety outcomes for children and clients of government services.
“One of the most important things about registration, is that it allows, for people who have committed either practice offences or ethical offences to be removed from the workforce.
“So that no other people are exposed to the risks of having to work with them.”
Ms Rolls said the department had “robust recruitment, training, supervision and performance processes in place to ensure the right people are caring” for children.
She said the department had also established the role of chief practitioner and a staff learning academy for professional development.
Loss of Aboriginal Authority
The axing of the scheme also meant the SWRB, established with $4.7 million government funding, and the Aboriginal Authority would “conclude their work”, the government said.
In 2025, former child protection minister Katrine Hildyard wrote in a newsletter published by the SWRB that the Aboriginal Authority would “ensure that the voices, knowledge, wisdom and experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are honoured, prioritised and embedded in every aspect of the way forward”.
Ms Lawrie was one of four Indigenous leaders appointed to the Aboriginal Authority by the government, but has since left the role.
April Lawrie is the former SA Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People. (ABC News: Che Chorley)
She said the authority would have worked with and ensured the SWRB operated with a culturally appropriate lens.
Ms Lawrie described the decision to dump the scheme, and the loss of the Aboriginal Authority, as “a missed opportunity” to address the disproportionate number of Indigenous children in the child protection system.
“This goes back to my disappointment that the government was not drawing the correlation between reports of professional misconduct, and the impact on the most vulnerable, which are our children,” she said.
Ms Lawrie said the Aboriginal Authority would have been a contact point for Indigenous South Australians to make complaints about service providers and social workers.
“We had a chance to be on the front-foot and deliver services through a competent workforce that was going to be held to account in providing culturally responsive, competent service to our most vulnerable,” she said.
In response, Ms Rolls said the department was committed to providing opportunities to promote, retain and offer professional development to Aboriginal staff.
