Page 234 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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When we talk about a child and young person death review committee we are not talking about a process which circumvents or overtakes the mechanisms we already have in place. Within the territory there are three existing mechanisms which work to review the deaths of children and young people, and these are the ACT Coroners Court, which must hold an inquest into the manner and cause of death of a person who dies in those circumstances set out in section 13 of the Coroners Act 1997; the Clinical Review Committee within ACT Health, which is a privileged committee; and the internal review process within the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services for children who have come into contact or are known to the Office for Children, Youth and Family Support.
In 2009, a memorandum of understanding was signed between ACT Health and the ACT Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services which of course includes care and protection services. And this allowed for the joint case review of clients known to both care and protection services and ACT Health. The review process is conducted under the auspices of the ACT Health Clinical Audit Committee. Cases referred to the audit committee include critical incidents, such as the death of an infant or child and near-miss incidents which also are reviewed.
In relation to the death of a child known to child protection services, currently the ACT Health Clinical Audit Committee can provide recommendations for systemic improvements for individual agencies and for improved collaboration between ACT Health and child protection services. Child protection services may also engage an external investigator to review a child death in some circumstances.
The mechanism I am proposing is designed to build on those existing reviews. The Children and Young People Death Review Committee will undertake its functions after any other applicable inquiry or investigation has run its course. The committee review is designed to be far broader ranging than the existing process and will collate existing information to give a broad perspective on child deaths in the ACT.
I think it is important that we understand why we need a death review committee for children and young people. Within a 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 Deaths Review Team. The ACT Government Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services are responsible for development of the legislation.
Mrs Dunne referred to this before and referred to the fact that nothing happened. Following on from this, as I said, there was no progress towards the development of legislation. 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 territory 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, to give the context
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