Child Deaths
Journalist briefing, updated January 2008
Background
Every ten days in England and Wales, on average, one child is killed at the hands of their parent. An average of 35 a year over the past five years.
Home Office crime figures show:
On average, 77 children in England and Wales are killed at the hands of another person every year. In 2004/2005, 58 children were killed at the hands of another person in England and Wales. (Home Office (2006) Violent Crime Overview, Homicide and Gun Crime 2004/2005: Supplementary Volume to Crime in England and Wales 2004/2005)
Infants aged under one are more at risk of being killed at the hands of another person than any other age group in England and Wales. (Home Office (2005) Crime in England and Wales 2003/2004: Supplementary Volume 1: Homicide and Gun Crime)
How does this happen?
Child deaths following abuse or neglect
Often a child or family is known to professionals, but the extent of abuse or neglect is not identified, and/or the alternatives for accommodating the child elsewhere are inappropriate. Removing a child from his/her home is a serious matter. Professionals need to be confident that they can place a child/children in appropriate alternative arrangements, and they need to be supported in those decisions.
Child deaths caused by mental or emotional instability
Some children are in the care of parents and/or having regular unsupervised contact with a parent suffering mental or emotional distress. Most of the time this will not affect day to day family life, but it may compromise the ability to parent effectively, and/or expose children to unexpectedly volatile behaviour if/when a parent suffers a psychotic episode.
The links between children's and adult services are not well developed, and considerably more work needs to be done in this area. Mental health professionals working with adults need training to understand their role in the multi-disciplinary support or child protection team, and in particular, to make confident decisions about the circumstances in which information should be shared. This will not only safeguard children, but will give parents a familiar and safe network of professionals from whom they can seek help or advice.
Child deaths as part of familicides
These are deaths caused by, for example: children intervening in incidents of domestic violence; a very controlling partner; marital breakdown and so on.
Such deaths would be prevented if there was greater recognition of the effect of domestic violence on children and in particular clearer protocols around sharing information between police domestic violence units and child protection units. Therapeutic treatment of abusive spouses should also be more widely and easily available, as should general counselling for families experiencing marital breakdown. Anxieties around unsupervised contact should always receive the most serious attention.
What is the sentence for child homicide?
Many child killers escape a murder charge by pleading guilty to manslaughter. They are likely to receive short jail terms, averaging between two and five years, though the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. A review of sentencing is now underway.
What the NSPCC is calling for?
The NSPCC has called on the government to take further action to identify and reduce the number of child deaths by:
Setting a target for reducing the number of children who are killed every year by their parents, and developing an integrated UK-wide strategy for achieving this.
Ensuring that the new child death investigation and review processes introduced by the Children Act 2004 (to be undertaken from April 2008 by Local Safeguarding Children Boards) are effective and adequately resourced, and the data they produce aggregated and published nationally to increase our understanding of why children die, and to inform strategies for preventing future child deaths.
Taking action to prevent homicides where professionals could be, or should have been, alert to the potential danger to a child or children.
Ensuring Coroner's Officers have an adequate and sustainable funding stream with which to conduct their enquiries.
Ensuring the provision of at least one coroner's officer with specialisation in handling child deaths, to ensure that, wherever possible, child homicides are identified.
Ensuring all autopsies on children are undertaken by a paediatric pathologist or a pathologist with specialist paediatric experience.
Making it a statutory requirement for every hospital to gather and co-ordinate information from staff and families when a child dies unexpectedly, either through the appointment of a child death review officer, or as an explicit part of the Patient Advocacy & Liaison Service (PALS) function.
Requiring publication of an annual bulletin of child homicides, broken down, as a minimum, by age and gender, to give a more precise picture of children killed in any one year.
Providing greater resources for families where a child has died or come close to death, with particular emphasis on the needs of siblings in the family.
Focusing particular attention on:
- Infants under one year of age, who are particularly vulnerable, and over-represented amongst recorded child homicides;
- Disabled children who may have repeated hospital admissions that are not directly linked to their disabling condition.
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Curtain Road, London EC2A 3NH. Incorporated by Royal Charter. Registered charity number 216401. NSPCC, charity registered in Scotland, charity number SC037717.