Families SA considered Chloe Valentine to be “at risk” before she was even born, an inquest into the four-year-old’s death has heard.

By the time she was six-weeks old, the agency had received multiple calls about Chloe, including one saying her mother had almost set fire to a mattress on the lounge room floor where the baby was sleeping.

Her mother, Ashlee Polkinghorne, 22, and her then-partner, Benjamin McPartland, 28, are in jail after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of Chloe through criminal neglect.

She died of massive head injuries after being forced to ride a motorbike that repeatedly crashed over a three-day period in the backyard of her Adelaide home in January 2012.

The Adelaide inquest into her death has been told Chloe was never removed from the care of her drug-taking mother, despite numerous neglect notifications from family, friends and other agencies.

Giving evidence on Wednesday, Salvation Army employee Katie Lawson said she was Polkinghorne’s case worker in 2007 when mother and baby lived in Salvation Army supported accommodation.

Lawson said she was contacted by a worried friend of Polkinghorne’s who said the then 16-year-old’s first comments after Chloe’s birth were that she was “glad it was all over so she could get pissed again”.

Lawson also learned from Families SA it had received a notification relating to concerns about the then-pregnant Polkinghorne, leading it to consider the unborn child as being “at risk”.

The Salvation Army worker said she began to have concerns about Polkinghorne, particularly when she asked for food vouchers after having received $1300 in benefits a few days before.

“Ashlee was very good at telling us what we wanted to hear,” she said.

The inquest is continuing.