A WOMAN found unfit to stand trial in Adelaide's "house of horrors" child abuse case has been ordered to undergo nine years of psychiatric care and to stay away from the children she tormented.

Trudy Quinlivan was charged with two counts of aggravated endangering life and three counts of aggravated creating a risk of serious harm over the abuse of five children.

In June, Justice Kevin Duggan found the facts of Quinlivan's offending had been established, but ruled the 31-year-old unfit to stand trial due to mental incompetence.

In the South Australian Supreme Court today, Justice John Sulan imposed a nine-year limiting term - a period of supervised psychiatric care comparable to a jail sentence that might have been imposed had the woman gone to trial.

He ordered Quinlivan be released on licence under conditions she report regularly for drug testing and submit to psychiatric care.

Justice Sulan also ordered Quinlivan not to contact any of her victims.

Quinlivan was one of six people charged over the abuse of the children, aged between four and seven, who were starved and forced to stand in line for days on end.

The five siblings were among 21 children living in a house in Adelaide's northern suburbs in 2008. They were fed only scraps of food over a four-month period.

The children were underweight, with open sores on their legs and ulcers on their feet, and were also infected with scabies.

They had been forced to stand in line with their hands on their heads and were fed just enough to keep them alive, risking being slapped and choked if they tried to get more.

The children's mother was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to a string of charges including endangering life, while four others were jailed for terms of up to 10 years for similar offences.