Issue - meetings

Matthew Cole, Director of Public Health, presented the Annual Report on behalf of the Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) and advised that the CDOP provided a comprehensive and multi-agency review of child death.  The aim of the reviews is to understand how and why children die in the Borough and use the finding to improve the health and safety of children in the area and reduce the risks of future child deaths.  There had been 27 deaths in the period and for a variety of reasons only 18 of those had been reviewed by the CDOP.

Councillor Turner stated that a version of this report had also been presented to the Local Safeguarding Children Board and he was concerned that the Borough had a high level of occurrence against the London average for neonatal deaths.  Mr Cole advised that the average for a year usually ranges from one to four neonatal deaths per year and with such small numbers the percentages could easily askew the London average rating. 

Councillor Carpenter asked for a further explanation in regard to paragraph 4.2 of the report.  Mr Cole advised that because child deaths are rare and intervals can be wide apart it is difficult to detect true statistical differences in death rates.  During 2014-15 data will be pooled from several north east London boroughs and analysed to see if this can increase the power to detect differences.

The Board were advised that Health Visitors and Midwives were also being reminded of the advice on back-to-sleep position and cessation of smoking, the two highest risks to neonatal deaths.

The Board noted the recommendations made during 2013/14 by Child Death Overview Panel to the Local Safeguarding Children Board and agencies and requested:

(ii)  BHRUT to provide further details on the reports of communication issues between BHRUT and the Ambulance Service at the 9 September 2014 meeting.

(ii)  A short update report to the 28 October 2014 Board, to include a further analysis of the figures.