Hancock said: I am confident that we actually do a pretty good job — I think, an excellent job — of learning from each circumstance and tying them together.” Until 2005, the law required the fatality review board to recommend an inquiry into every death in care, unless the board was convinced the death was both natural and unpreventable. In 2005, the law was changed, and now, the board can avert an inquiry if it sees “no meaningful connection” between the child’s death and the quality of care. At the time of the law change, critics said the board couldn’t possibly know whether the quality of care played a role in the child’s death without a fatality inquiry, and warned the change would reduce the number of inquiries into deaths in care. Indeed, in the 15 years that preceded the law change, there was an average of three inquiries a year into the deaths of children in care. In the four years that followed the change, the average was fewer than one. In 2006 and 2008, there were none. Those statistics were contained in annual reports issued by the medical examiner’s office, but the office stopped publishing such reports in 2009. So if inquires are not conducted, how exactly does that equate to doing a good, excellent job Hancock says, and how can you tie circumstances together if you do not have any information regarding the circumstances.
Posted on: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 16:39:39 +0000
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