Department Of Health
When a child dies, child death review partners must make arrangements:
- to conduct a child death review (CDR) to investigate the reasons for the death
- for the analysis of information about deaths reviewed
See Child death review: statutory and operational guidance (England).
These arrangements should also result in the establishment of a child death overview panel (CDOP) or equivalent to review the deaths of all children normally resident in the relevant local authority area, and if appropriate and agreed between partners, the deaths in that area of non-resident children.
We recommend that CDOP secretariats complete the forms on this page and submit them to the CDOP ahead of the CDR process to help this investigation.
The completed forms will help CDOPs:
- collect information regarding the child deaths in their area in a consistent way
- assess the causes of child deaths in their area
- see if there are significant similarities between child deaths in their area and recommend how to prevent similar deaths in future
- make arrangements to share results of local CDRs with the National Child Mortality Database from 1 April 2019
For every child death, the CDOP secretariat should:
- Fill in Child death notification form.
- Ask the agency that has been involved in the CDR process to fill in:
- Child death reporting form
- the relevant supplementary reporting forms, depending on the cause of death
- Fill in Child death analysis form so the CDOP can analyse the case.
You can find more information on CDOPs responsibilities regarding child death notifications in the guidance Working together to safeguard children.