Since 1 April, 2008, Local Safeguarding Children Partnerships (LSCP’s) have had a statutory responsibility to review all deaths of children from birth (excluding still born babies and planned terminations) up to 18 years, who are normally live in their area.

These duties are set out in Chapter 6 of Working Together to Safeguard Children (HM Government 2023).

Reviewing child deaths includes collecting information about the circumstances and family background. The overall purpose is to understand how and why children die, make recommendations to protect other children and to prevent future deaths.

The child death service is made up of a senior responsible officer, specialist nurse for child death, designated doctor for child death and administrative support, and their role is to support families and professionals who have worked with a child who has died, and to ensure the processes are followed.

Part of this service includes a Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) meeting which monitors and review all child deaths. The panel includes representatives from Social Care, Health, Police, Public Health and local Children’s Hospice. Attached are annual reports from the National Child Mortality Database (NCMD) from 2020.

For sudden and unexpected deaths a co-ordinated, multi-agency Rapid Response is initiated to ensure safeguarding and public health issues are considered.

For further details, please contact Elena Lloyd, Designated Nurse for Safeguarding Children and SRO for Child death.