7.7 Child Death Review Process

When a child dies, in any circumstances, it is important for parents and families to understand what has happened and whether there are any lessons to be learned.

The responsibility for ensuring child death reviews are carried out is held by ‘child death review partners,’ who, in relation to a local authority area in England, are defined as the local authority for that area and any clinical commissioning groups operating in the local authority area.

Child death review partners must make arrangements to review all deaths of children normally resident in the local area and, if they consider it appropriate, for any non-resident child who has died in their area.

Child death review partners for two or more local authority areas may combine and agree that their areas be treated as a single area for the purpose of undertaking child death reviews.

Child death review partners must make arrangements for the analysis of information from all deaths reviewed.

The purpose of a review and/or analysis is to identify any matters relating to the death, or deaths, that are relevant to the welfare of children in the area or to public health and safety, and to consider whether action should be taken in relation to any matters identified. If child death review partners find action should be taken by a person or organisation, they must inform them. In addition, child death review partners:

  • must, at such times as they consider appropriate, prepare and publish reports on:
    • what they have done as a result of the child death review arrangements in their area, and
    • how effective the arrangements have been in practice;
  • may request information from a person or organisation for the purposes of enabling or assisting the review and/or analysis process - the person or organisation must comply with the request, and if they do not, the child death review partners may take legal action to seek enforcement: and
  • may make payments directly towards expenditure incurred in connection with arrangements made for child death reviews or analysis of information about deaths reviewed, or by contributing to a fund out of which payments may be made; and may provide staff, goods, services, accommodation or other resources to any person for purposes connected with the child death review or analysis process.

Contents

HIPS CDOP Annual Report

The HIPS CDOP Annual Report 2021-2022 is available to view and download. 

Child Death Review Process in the HIPS Areas

This guidance sets out the agreed process for implementing the Child Death Review procedure.  This should be read in conjunction with Working Together to Safeguard Children, the Child Death Review Statutory and Operational guidance 2018  and the Sudden unexpected death in infancy and childhood 2016

National Child Mortality Database

The National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) is a repository of data relating to all children’s deaths in England. It is the only statutory mechanism for reporting all child deaths and it enables more detailed analysis and interpretation of all data arising from the child death review process, to ensure that lessons are learned following a child’s death that learning is widely shared, and that actions are taken, locally and nationally, to reduce child mortality.

All Child Death Reviews across HIPS should instruct their Child Death Overview Panel of the completed local reviews and submit a draft copy of the analysis form and any other correspondence from the child death review process. This will be reported to the National Child Mortality Database by the HIPS CDOP Team.

Child Death Notification and Reporting

All child deaths are to be notified to the HIPS CDOP Team via eCDOP at https://www.ecdop.co.uk/HIPS/Live/public and this will automatically update the National Child Mortality Database.

Reporting forms for each child death will be requested via eCDOP and this will be managed by the HIPS CDOP Team.

Examples of the information that is to be shared via the secure online system can be seen in the following documents:

Child Death Notification Form

Child Death Reporting Form

Child Death Analysis Form

 

If there are any queries, the HIPS CDOP Team can be contacted at hiowicb-hsi.hips.cdop@nhs.net

Further Child Death reporting information is available on the government website.            

 

Bereavement Information

Download the Hampshire services to support children and young people experiencing bereavement and loss here.

The Bereavement Outcomes Framework for professionals is available here.

Further information

This page is correct as printed on Saturday 7th of December 2024 05:25:03 AM please refer back to this website (http://hipsprocedures.org.uk) for updates.