The Families SA staff criticised by the coroner over their handling of the Chloe Valentine case have kept their jobs following an internal review.

The Department for Education and Child Development (DECD) reviewed the conduct of the 11 employees named in the Coroner’s report into the case who are still employed by the department.

The DECD review recommended that eight employees, who were criticised by the Coroner, be given counselling and a one-on-one session with DECD Chief Executive Tony Harrison to address specific points raised by the Coroner.

The review blamed the system, rather than the individuals, for the mistakes in the handling of the case. Four-year-old Chloe died after being repeatedly forced to ride a motorbike which she crashed. Her mother, Ashlee Polkinghorne, and Polkinghorne’s former partner Benjamin McPartland were jailed for manslaughter.

A scathing Coroner’s report into the case recommended sweeping changes to the state’s child protection regime, but also singled out individual case workers for criticism.

“Poor decisions were made, but it is clear from the review that in the majority of cases this was the result of misguided policy, insufficient guidance or a lack of training,” Harrison said in a statement this morning.

“These systemic deficiencies have been addressed and the child protection practices will be further strengthened as we implement the Coroner’s recommendations.

“Social workers do a difficult job in an incredibly high risk environment.

“The potential consequences of the decisions they make can be grave, which is why the system has to be robust enough to reduce or eliminate the influence of individual errors of judgement.

“In the tragic case of Chloe Valentine the system failed that test.”

Harrison told FIVEaa radio this morning that a management process, rather than a disciplinary process, was appropriate for the staff criticised by Coroner Mark Johns in his report.

“I’ve since met with seven of those,” said Harrison.

“There are two pathways you can take: one is a more strict disciplinary process where you actually… instigate more formal charging action against individuals, and the other one is more of a managerial process where you actually provide some form of guidance or counselling in respect of an individual’s actions.

“Those individuals were operating between 2007 and 2012 as social workers, and I’m of the view that they were very much working within a culture, within a system, that did let Chloe down.

“I don’t think you can necessarily apply today’s standards on decisions that people took back in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

“The coroner Mark Johns made a lot of comments about systemic failures and culture of the organisation at the time.

“My view strongly is that these individuals were part of that culture – they were making decisions under a particular program to keep a child together with her mother at that time, and, as I said, we missed opportunities to actually take Chloe out of that chaotic environment.”

Harrison said he had spoken to Chloe’s grandmother, Belinda Valentine “and Belinda has expressed her view that she’s very supportive of the … action I’ve taken”.

“She’s of the view that it’s time to learn from what happened in the past and move on and she’s very, very supportive of working with the department and also very supportive of those individuals who were involved in her case at the time, to meet with them if she can and also provide support to those individuals, so hopefully they can continue doing really good work.”