Publication, Part of Child Death Reviews

Child Death Reviews: year ending 31 March 2019

Official statistics

Number of Reviews

3,250 child death reviews were completed in the year ending 31 March 2019. This total is lower than the previous year (3,595) but this is likely to be due to a lower number of CDOPs being covered in the LSCB submissions (122 CDOPs for the year ending 31 March 2019 and 127 for the year ending 31 March 2018).
The long-term plateau in the number of child deaths reviewed is mirrored in the ONS data for number of child deaths registered (from 4,160 to 4,100 over the 2017-18 period, which is the latest data available from ONS).
There seems to be a steadily increasing trend in the percentage of child death reviews assessed as having modifiable factors (24% in the year ending 31 March 2015 to 30% in the year ending 31 March 2019).

Figure 1: Number of child death reviews in England, 2014-15 to 2018-19

Graph showing steady increase in percentage of deaths with modifiable factors from 14/15 to 18/19

Nearly 99% (3,215) of the child death reviews had enough information for the panels to complete the reviews. There were 35 cases where the panels had insufficient information to determine if the death was preventable or not.
There were 75 serious case reviews that took place (2% of the 3,215 child death reviews); of these, 85% were identified as having modifiable factors. This proportion is higher than it was in the year ending 31 March 2018 (74%).
CDOPs in the North West identified the highest proportion of modifiable factors in the child death reviews they completed (41%) and East of England reported the lowest (22%).

Figure 2: Number of child death reviews with modifiable factors, by region, 2018-19.

Graph shows percentage of modifiable factors with North West highest and East of England lowest

Definitions

Modifiable factors are factors which, by means of nationally or locally achievable interventions, could be modified to reduce the risk of future child deaths.
Insufficient information are cases when panels are not able to determine if the death was preventable or not. In some cases this was because it was not possible to gather further information, for example if the coroner was unable to conclusively determine the cause of death and in other cases it was because of difficulties in obtaining accurate information, for example when a child died abroad and limited information was provided to the panel.

Last edited: 20 September 2019 1:49 pm