The Malinauskas Labor Government has invested $600,000 into an electronic reporting system crucial to the protection and wellbeing of South Australia's children and young people.
These upgrades, despite increased demand, are allowing Department for Child Protection call centre staff to answer more calls, more quickly than last year.
The online eCARL system is used by mandated notifiers to report a non-urgent suspicion that a child or young person is, or may be, at risk of harm.
Mandatory notifiers are professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers and emergency services personnel required under state government legislation to report suspected child abuse or neglect.
eCARL sits together with the Child Abuse Report Line (CARL) which is also operated by the Department for Child Protection and used to report incidences of suspected child abuse or neglect.
The upgrades to eCARL aim to improve useability and efficiency and enhance security and further enhanced the system's usability and security and allowed for improved integration with SA Police, Department for Education and SA Health platforms.
Further improvements are planned to support the processing of eCARL notifications when the project enters the next phase in 2025.
The eCARL system has become crucial in supporting the DCP Call Centre, which received almost 120,000 contacts in 2023-24.
While on hold, mandatory-notifier callers are urged to use eCARL if they are reporting non-urgent notifications.
Callers have started responding strongly to that request, with eCARL notifications rising significantly in 2023-24 (see table below), greatly taking load off the Call Centre and its staff.
Serious concerns still need to be reported via CARL on 13 14 78.
For more information on mandatory reporting, including a fact sheet on the new system, click here.
As put by Katrine Hildyard
The State Government has invested an additional $450m into the child protection and family support system, including to enhance how notifications are received. Many families are facing complex, interconnected and intergenerational issues. When they grapple with these issues and require their need for support to be flagged, we want this process to be as effective as possibe.
The enhanced eCARL system gives our mandatory notifiers - including doctors, teachers, and emergency workers – an effective and efficient way to report concerns about child safety.
The upgrades have already shown tremendous results, with a significant increase in online notifications helping to manage the workload of our dedicated Call Centre staff, who handled 120,000 contacts last year, responding to more calls than ever before, more quickly.
Investing in frontline workers having the modern tools they need to report concerns about children demonstrates our government's commitment to supporting children and young people and transforming the child protection and family support system.
I wholeheartedly thank our frontline staff who are taking these calls and reports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – protecting the safety and wellbeing of children and young people. They are extraordinary people who undertake really difficult work.
This investment in eCARL comes as the new, modernised Department for Child Protection call centre was officially opened yesterday.
