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Volume 19, No.3 - 2000

 [Table of Contents] 

  

Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC)

Status Report
Child Mortality Analysis Project

Sharon Bartholomew and Gordon Phaneuf

Current data collection practices used in Canada concerning child deaths may discourage child deaths due to maltreatment from being captured as such. The Child Maltreatment Division of Health Canada's Bureau of Reproductive and Child Health is currently funding research focusing on this problem.

The Child Mortality Analysis Project will consist of three sections. First, the existing data collection procedures, techniques and practices utilized by the various professions who intervene in cases of child death will be examined, with a focus on those cases where maltreatment is suspected or substantiated. The next step will be to conduct a comparative analysis of these practices. With the results of these two parts of the project in mind, the third activity will be to develop a model for multidisciplinary child death review teams, including recommendations for data collection.

The research will be conducted by surveying child welfare systems, chief coroners and chief medical examiners, and law enforcement systems at the provincial and territorial level. Two instruments will be administered to these key stakeholders to accomplish two major tasks: examining and analyzing the processes used to investigate child deaths at the provincial and territorial level.

Goals

  • To contribute to a better understanding of how data relating to suspicious child deaths are captured
  • To develop a model to help inform multidisciplinary responses to child deaths

Objectives

  • To examine how suspicious child deaths are classified in Canada
  • To document the obstacles to child mortality data collection
  • To provide a description of the procedures, techniques and practices that would facilitate better identification, classification and data capture of the incidence of child mortality where child maltreatment is suspected
  • To provide recommendations regarding the advisability and feasibility of graduating toward improved national collection of child mortality data
  • To provide valuable policy and operational insights for stakeholders involved with the issue of responding to child deaths where child maltreatment is suspected
  • To develop a model for child death review in Canada
  • To better understand the role of selected disciplines in responding to child deaths (e.g. child protection, social work, forensic science, medicine and child mental health)

Uses for Resulting Information

It is anticipated that the information and knowledge generated by this project will serve to enhance our understanding of the obstacles to data collection in this subject area and provide recommendations regarding the advisability and feasibility of graduating toward a national child mortality data collection strategy.

A further goal is to provide a description of the procedures, techniques and practices that would facilitate better identification, classification and data capture of the incidence of child mortality where child maltreatment is suspected. The analysis should provide valuable policy and operational insights for stakeholders involved with the issue of responding to child deaths where child maltreatment is suspected.

A range of professions concerned with the issue of child death will be targeted with the model, including law enforcement, child protection, mental health, medicine, public health, forensic science, policy and program analysis and the judiciary. The model should serve to assist coroners and child death review teams to collect more accurate data on child mortality and thus improve the consistency of national child mortality data. Issues such as data collection, role definition and multidisciplinary integrated response will be examined.


Project Team

The project is being undertaken by Jan Christianson-Wood, a social worker and Special Investigator in Manitoba's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and Jane Lothian Murray, a criminologist and researcher at the University of Winnipeg. A multidisciplinary project advisory committee will be formed to provide advice on the project.  


Author References

Sharon Bartholomew and Gordon Phaneuf (Chief), Child Maltreatment Division, Bureau of Reproductive and Child Health, Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, Health Canada, Tunney's Pasture, AL: 0601E2, Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 0L2; Fax: (613) 941-9927

 
Last Updated: 2002-10-20 Top
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