A Child Death Review Committee was established in 2003 by the Western Australian government to ‘provide quality assurance mechanisms of particular departmental cases where a child has died’. The Committee was to seek to understand why children in the care of child welfare authorities had died, determine whether departmental procedures had an impact on events and make recommendations to improve policy and practice. Annual reports were made publicly available. In 2007, the government decided to transfer the child death review function to the Ombudsman.
In her final Annual Report as chair of the Child Death Review Committee, Dr Denzil McCotter summarised the factors that the Committee recommended were essential practice for preventing children’s death or harm while they were under the protection of child welfare authorities:
- actually getting to know the child, the siblings and their needs
- sighting the child and not accepting third party views of the child’s wellbeing
- properly addressing neglect and Failure to Thrive
- listening to the concerns of family members and friends and staff of other agencies
- interagency collaboration.
Annual Report 2007-2008 p.ii