New guidelines plan for HSE on children-in-care deaths

THE HSE could be duty bound to report the death of a child linked to the care system within 48 hours of the event, under new guidelines unveiled yesterday.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) published its recommended guidelines, which would also see a panel of up to 20 independent experts in child care and support being selected to review the HSE’s handling of child deaths and follow-up investigations.

Up to four members of that panel could then be selected to deal with specific cases, and HIQA said it would be monitoring how effective the HSE’s response to child deaths and serious incidents involving children in the care system were.

The guidelines, entitled ‘Guidance for the Health Service Executive for the Review of Serious Incidents including Deaths of Children in Care’, have been passed to the Minister for Children Barry Andrews.

However, HIQA is not a statutory body and yesterday its Chief Inspector of Social Services, Dr Marion Witton, said she hoped the guidelines would be made law as soon as possible so the new system could be implemented.

The publication of the guidelines comes just days after Minister Andrews appointed two senior child care experts, Norah Gibbons and Geoffrey Shannon, as co-chairs of a new child death review panel.

They will be charged with reviewing the deaths of 23 children in the care system in the past 10 years.

HIQA said yesterday its guidelines would help the HSE avoid similar situations in future. The guidelines stipulate the HSE must inform the Social Services Inspectorate (SSI) within 48 hours of any death of a child in care, of a child known to the child protection system, of a young adult up to the age of 21 who was previously in care, or when a case of suspected or confirmed abuse involves the death of a child known to the HSE or HSE-funded service.

Dr Witton said families would also have the right to appeal if the expert panel ruled there should not be an investigation in the event of a particular child death.

Clear timeframes would be put in place so that reviews would be concluded within a matter of months and the HSE should publish them, or at least the executive summary, within 30 days.