From April 2008 the LSCB (Local Safeguarding Children Board) has a statutory responsibility to put into place a Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP).
The purpose of the CDOP is to better understand how children unexpectedly die locally and what could be done to try and prevent future similar deaths and improve the health and safety of children.
The defintion of an unexpected child death:
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The child's death was not anticipated as a significant possibility 24 hours before the death.
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Or where a child collapsed unexpectedly which led to or precipitated the events which led to the death. (Working Together 2006).
This applies to children and young people aged 0 to 18-years-old.
The Child Death Overview Panel meets on a quartley basis and is chaired by the Director of Public Health.
For further information about the Child Death Overview Panel there is the LSCB newsletter about the CDOP:
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In addition the LSCB have produced an information leaflet :
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Please note: The above documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF). You will need a suitable reader to view them. A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site).