Page 3827 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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comment on the individual performance of people; nor do they investigate the causes of child deaths. That role is left to the police and coroner.
Child death review teams do not conduct interviews or meet with staff or families of the deceased, but rather rely on document analysis. Child death review teams are categorised as a second tier review mechanism. The key contribution to be made by this mechanism is the identification of emerging trends, common themes and issues across the child deaths that have been recorded in the ACT.
New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia have child death review teams, and Tasmania is working on establishing one. These states and territories each conduct their review mechanisms in a slightly different way. What we propose here today are the best parts of these experiences for legislation that will work to strengthen the ACT community’s ability to make recommendations and take action that can prevent future deaths of children and young people.
Many children’s advocates in the ACT have long been calling for the establishment of a children and young people death review committee, and there is a long history associated with the formation and development of a child death review mechanism in the ACT. Simon Corbell, as the then health minister, announced on 23 March 2004 that “a child death review team would be established to review the deaths of people up to 17 years and 11 months”. In May 2004, The territory as parent report, also known as the Vardon report, was released, and it held strong recommendations about the need for a child death review team in the ACT.
In 2004, a child death review committee was formed to review child deaths that occurred in the ACT between 1992 and 2003. The purpose was to review the deaths of children and to consider and make recommendations to address systemic social and environmental issues that were associated with children and young people.
In 2006, the committee presented its report, which showed that no child or young person known to the child protection department had died as a result of non-accidental injury inflicted by another person during that period. Within that report, titled Review of ACT child deaths, released by the Office of the Chief Health Officer in 2006, it was stated:
A need has been identified for appropriate legislation that will underpin the operations of the Child Death Review Team. The ACT Government Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services is responsible for development of the legislation.
Following on from this, there has been no progress towards the development of legislation for a child and young people death review committee in the ACT. This means that currently there are no processes in place for the routine preparation and tabling of an annual report on child deaths in the ACT and, therefore, no access to information.
The child death review mechanism proposed in this bill goes beyond a statistical analysis of the figures. This is an opportunity to give the narrative context and supply
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