Family Law

The Department for Education (DfE) has issued updated contact details of the designated people in every child death overview panel to whom child death notifications should be sent.

Since 1 April 2008, all local safeguarding children boards (LSCBs) are required to review the deaths of all children in their area.

The overall principle of the child death review process is to learn lessons and reduce the incidence of preventable child deaths in the future. It is a statutory requirement in the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 that each LSCB must make arrangements for the receipt of notifications from registrars and to publish those arrangements.

The Coroners (Amendment) Rules 2008 also place a duty on coroners to inform an LSCB for the area in which the child died that there will be an inquest or post-mortem.

In addition, in order for LSCBs to fulfil their responsibilities for reviewing deaths, every LSCB should be informed of all deaths of children normally resident in its geographical area.

To assist those responsible for carrying out these tasks, the DfE has issued updated contact details for the child death overview panels in England, which can be viewed here.