Fund child abuse education: SA child carer

A South Australian childcare centre is calling on the state government to fund a child abuse education and prevention program to help "unclog" the state's child protection system.

Natasha O'Brien, the owner of O'Brien's Montessori Centre in north-east Adelaide, says the state's mandatory reporting system doesn't cut it.

"We make reports all the time and can often be on hold for up to an hour. But the answer to that is education and prevention," she told AAP.

"If you educate these children to speak up so that we can get to the bottom of it [abuse] quite early, you don't have 30 different mandatory reports in the one situation because the child's not speaking."

Figures obtained by Family First have revealed over 15,000 calls to the state's abuse hotline were abandoned in the past financial year and about 85,000 went unanswered over the past four years.

Miss O'Brien said her centre's adoption of Bravehearts' child abuse education and prevention program, Ditto, has proved far more effective than the existing system.

"We did have one incident where one child piqued up and said they didn't like sleepovers...at his dad's place because he was being abused," she told AAP.

Miss O'Brien is campaigning for the SA government to subsidise the Ditto program throughout the state's childcare centres, kindergartens and primary schools.