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Child Death Review Teams

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Child Maltreatment Fatalities in the United States

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Abstract

One of the most well known responses to fatal child maltreatment has been the establishment of child death review teams. These are multidisciplinary work groups, comprised at the state or county level, that meet regularly to review the death of children. The goal is to study child and family characteristics and to examine the potential services that the child and family may have been receiving. With an eye toward prevention, child death review teams aim to identify missed opportunities to take protective action on behalf of children before their death. Child death review teams are governed by state statute and their operations are increasingly streamlined by the National Center for the Review and Prevention of Child Deaths. This chapter describes the activities and outcomes of child death review teams. There is wide spread use of child death review teams both inside and outside of the United States. The efficacy of review teams is unknown because of a lack of research. This chapter discusses the potential contributions that this policy and programmatic response have made in the arena of fatal child maltreatment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The terms “Child death review” and “child fatality review” are used interchangeably, as are “teams” and “panels” to refer to this multidisciplinary workgroup. I primary use the term child death review, CDR, or child death review team, CDRT, in this book, but may occasionally use alternate language in order to be consistent with the literature or other resources.

  2. 2.

    Only three CDRT leaders responded and I spoke to all of them. I have kept their identities and the identities of their states confidential.

  3. 3.

    It can be tempting for CDRTs to only document the number of children who died each year. Reporting the rate is the more appropriate figure because the number of children in a state changes annually, so it is important to know the proportion of children who die each year as opposed to only the numbers. One state made a potential connection between a home visiting program and a decline in the number of CMF victims each year; reporting the rate would have made their argument more convincing to readers and to decision-makers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, USA

    Emily M. Douglas

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  1. Emily M. Douglas
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Douglas, E.M. (2017). Child Death Review Teams. In: Child Maltreatment Fatalities in the United States. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7583-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7583-0_5

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