New child death review arrangements
Enfield has a Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) to review all child deaths. The Panel has been in operation since 1 April 2008.
As part of new Safeguarding children arrangements (PDF, 2243.07 KB), the child death review (CDR) processes are also required to transform.
In October 2018, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education released new child death review statutory and operational guidance. It builds on statutory requirements set out in Working Together to Safeguard Children and clarifies how professionals and organisations across all sectors involved in a child death should contribute to the child death review process. Oversight for CDR processes will move from the Department of Education to the Department for Health and Social Care recognising that most child deaths are due to medical factors rather than safeguarding issues.
The new guidance aims to:
- improve the experience of bereaved families.
- ensure that information from the child death review process is systematically captured in every case to enable learning and to prevent future deaths.
One requirement of the new guidance is the CDR processes must review at least 60 deaths per year. Based on the last 3 years’ data the average number of deaths across the 5 boroughs of North Central London (NCL) is 80 (Barnet, 20, Camden 11, Enfield 20, Haringey 20 and Islington 13).
Based on this as well as organisational and NHS landscape, the CDR partners in North Central London recommend that a single NCL CDR process is established across Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington.
Enfield CDOP Protocol
You can download the Enfield CDOP Protocol and Terms of Reference (PDF, 401.33 KB).
Notification of a child death to the CDOP for London Borough of Enfield
Any agency or professional should make a notification to our e-CDOP if they become aware of:
- a child death occurring in borough of Enfield
- a death of a child normally resident in this borough but occurring elsewhere
Scope
The CDOP gathers and assesses data on the deaths of all children and young people from birth (excluding babies who are stillborn) up to the age of 18 years who are normally resident in Enfield. This includes neonatal deaths, expected and unexpected deaths in infants and in older children.
Where a child normally resident in another area dies within Enfield, the death should be notified to the CDOP in the child’s area of residence. Similarly, when a child normally resident in Enfield dies outside of the area, Enfield CDOP should be notified.
In both cases, an agreement should be made as to which CDOP (normally that of the child’s area of residence) will review the child’s death and how they will report to the other.