School Representative

Local Child Fatality Review Team: Role of the School District Representative

Child Fatality Review (CFR) is a multidisciplinary process to help us better understand why children in our community die and to help us identify how we can prevent future deaths.

Local Child Fatality Review Teams will meet with varying frequency to review sudden, unexpected, and unexplained deaths, deaths investigated by DCS, and those deaths classified as undetermined, homicide, suicide, or accident, for all children under the age of eighteen. Team members will share case information on child deaths that occur in their region with the goal of preventing future deaths. In order for this team to be successful, all agencies involved in the safety, health, and protection of children must be involved.

The death of a child is a tragic event. Reviewing the circumstances involved in every death is part of our job as professionals and requires our time and commitment. Only then can we truly understand how to better protect our children and prevent future deaths from occurring.

• The school district representative can provide the team with:
  • School information about the deceased child, family, siblings, and fellow students
• The school district representative can provide the team with expertise on:
  • Policies and practices of the school system at the State and local level
  • Prevention activities already implemented in the education system or that are geared toward school-age children
• The school district representative can support the team with assistance by:
  • Persuading education professionals from other school systems to participate on the CFR team when there is a death in that system
  • Facilitating access to and information from other school districts
  • Providing assistance to member agencies in working with school systems in the region
• The school district representative can help build bridges by:
  • Learning about the policies and practices of other agencies through team participation
  • Acting as liaison between the CFR team and the region’s other school systems
  • Explaining to the team how to improve coordination with education agencies