Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they intend to take regarding the multi-agency guidelines for care and investigation relating to sudden unexpected deaths in infancy and childhood produced by a working group convened by The Royal College of Pathologists and The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and chaired by Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws.

The Department is currently working with NHS England, NHS Improvement and Public Health England to improve identification of preventable child deaths, with the aim to reduce child mortality in this country.

The first aspect of the work will be the development of a National Child Death Database.

A second strand, aimed at ensuring good quality data for the database, is the production of a set of multi-agency guidelines for care and investigation for all child deaths, including sudden unexpected deaths in infancy and childhood.

Key stakeholders are being consulted in the development of the National Child Death Database and the guidelines reviewing the local child death review process. This will include liaising with the working group convened by the Royal College of Pathologists and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health chaired by Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws.