Statutory guidance

Child death review: statutory and operational guidance (England)

Statutory and operational guidance for clinical commissioning groups and local authorities as child death review partners.

Documents

Details

Following the implementation of the Health and Care Act 2022 on 1 July 2022, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have been abolished and their functions have been assumed by integrated care boards (ICBs).

Public Health England has also been replaced by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID).

These changes will be made to the guidance at its next update.

This guidance sets out the full process that follows the death of a child who is normally resident in England. It builds on the statutory requirements set out in Working together to safeguard children and clarifies how individual professionals and organisations across all sectors involved in the child death review should contribute to reviews.

The guidance sets out the process in order to:

  • improve the experience of bereaved families, and professionals involved in caring for children
  • ensure that information from the child death review process is systematically captured in every case to enable learning to prevent future deaths

NHS England has published guidance for the bereaved, When a child dies: a guide for parents and carers, setting out the steps that follow the death of a child.

The collation and sharing of the learning from reviews is managed by the National Child Mortality Database through the use of standardised forms.

Published 15 October 2018
Last updated 20 September 2019 + show all updates
  1. Corrections to information in paragraph 2.4.4 about coroner forms 100A and 100B.

  2. Amended the definition of late foetal loss in the terminology section on page 5.

  3. First published.