DCP South Australia Kinship Care: Carer Support Payments Explained

What DCP Does and Does Not Fund

The Department for Child Protection (DCP) is the state agency responsible for statutory child protection in South Australia under the Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017. When DCP determines a child is at risk, it can initiate proceedings in the Youth Court, approve carers, and fund placements.

The critical point for grandparent and kinship carers: DCP Carer Support Payments are paid automatically to approved family-based carers who have a child placed in their care. If you are raising a relative's child through a private family arrangement with no DCP placement, you are an informal kinship carer and DCP payments do not apply to you.

This is not about your need. It is about whether the child entered your care through the child protection system or through a family decision.

How Carer Support Payments Work

For approved statutory carers, DCP pays a fortnightly Carer Support Payment based on the child's age. These payments are designed as non-taxable expense reimbursements — they do not count as assessable income for tax purposes and Centrelink ignores them entirely when calculating your income support.

On top of the base payment, DCP provides:

Special Needs Loadings — four levels, determined by caseworker assessment, for children with physical, intellectual or behavioural complexities. Level 4 is the highest, for children requiring intensive support.

Incidental payments — one-off amounts for school camps, therapeutic costs, family contact travel and other irregular expenses that fall outside the fortnightly base.

Start-up grants — an initial payment when a child first arrives in your care, covering basic setup costs like bedding, clothing and essentials.

Post-18 support — under the Supported Family-Based Care (SFBC) over-18 program, DCP extends basic carer payments and education allowances if a young person stays in your home up to age 21 or 26.

Section 76 Delegation: Who Can Say OK?

One of the most practical questions in statutory kinship care is who has authority to make everyday decisions for the child — school excursions, haircuts, sports registration, sleepovers.

Under section 76 of the Children and Young People (Safety) Act 2017, DCP can delegate specific decision-making powers to approved carers. The Department publishes a resource called "Who Can Say OK?" that maps which decisions carers can make on their own, which require caseworker approval, and which need the Chief Executive or the court.

For most day-to-day matters, an approved carer with a section 76 delegation operates much like a parent. The boundaries tighten around medical procedures, interstate travel and anything that changes the child's living arrangement.

If You Are an Informal Carer

If you have no DCP involvement, your financial support runs through Centrelink at the federal level — Family Tax Benefit, Additional Child Care Subsidy (Grandparent), Double Orphan Pension and other payments that do not require a court order. The state concessions through ConcessionsSA (energy, water, cost-of-living) are also available based on your card status.

The parliamentary Social Development Committee Inquiry into Financial Assistance for Foster and Kinship Carers has received submissions from Grandcarers SA and others calling for a state-funded informal kinship care allowance to close this gap. As of late 2026, that allowance does not yet exist.

Knowing Which System You Are In

The distinction between DCP statutory care and informal kinship care determines everything: which payments you receive, which forms you fill in, which phone number to call, and who makes decisions about the child. Getting that wrong at the start costs weeks of wasted applications.

Our SA kinship carer guide starts with a decision matrix that connects your specific arrangement type to the right agencies, payments and paperwork — so you never spend an hour on hold with a department that cannot help you.

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