A mother who pleaded guilty to criminal neglect has been confronted by her other children and emergency service workers.

A mother has who previously admitted to the criminal neglect of her six-year-old daughter causing her death has been forced to listen to harrowing victim impact statements.

WATCH ABOVE: Adelaide mother listens to powerful and horrific victim impact statements over her deaths death.

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Charlie Nowland was just six, weighed only 18kg and was riddled with lice when she was found unresponsive at her Munno Para housing trust home on July 15, 2022.

She was rushed to Lyell McEwin Hospital but died from cardiac failure associated with anaemia and severe iron deficiency.

The cause of death: severe malnutrition.

On Tuesday the court heard Charlie was so severely malnourished her body "essentially collapsed" and her heart failed. Her mother failed to get Charlie help despite her losing the ability to walk in the days prior to her death.

Police described the scene inside the home as "an atrocity".

Her mother, Crystal Leanne Hanley, 49, spent nearly three years denying any wrongdoing -- but broke down in the South Australian Supreme Court in May, pleading guilty to three counts of criminal neglect of three of her children just days before her trial was due to begin.

Hanley was facing a further two counts of criminal neglect and one count of manslaughter, but the remaining charges were dropped on account of her early guilty pleas.

Detective Haydn Evans told the court on Tuesday the stench and squalor of Charlie's home were unlike anything he'd witnessed in his career.

"It was and still is in a category of its own," he said.

"I'll never forget that night, no child should ever have to suffer the way Charlie did.

"I can still vividly see Charlie's lifeless body on the hospital bed.

"I can still smell the house and the appalling state it was in."

An emergency nurse, Angela Dente, recalled the horror of treating the little girl. Charlie's head, ears and nose were infested with lice eggs, she told the court, and her hands and feet were caked in dirt that had to be scraped off.

"I kept looking at her little sweet face," she said.

"I was shocked to be told that what I thought was dried up vomit strewn through her hair ... was in fact a head full of lice eggs."

In powerful victim impact statements, Hanley's surviving children condemned their mother.

"I had to be a parent to Charlie because you weren't," one said.

"You were selfish. All you cared about was drugs when you should have cared about us."

Hanley has previously told the court she knew there were issues.

"I'm not a perfect mum but I feed my kids," she said.

Hanley's other children were examined on the day of Charlie's death, with several of them also found to have horrific lice infestation problems.

Justice Sandi McDonald said "there's absolutely no explanation for this abhorrent behaviour."

In a letter of apology Hanley said she has failed all her children and is deeply sorry and regrets so much.

Her lawyer said she was so pre-occupied with her drug use, she paid no attention to her children.

The case has been adjourned for further submissions at a later date.