Agenda item

Steven Senior, Public Health Consultant to present the attached draft report.

Steven Senior, Public Health Consultant presented the CDOP Annual Report 2023-2024 to the Board. Steven Senior reported that the CDOP process takes place at the end of a child’s death process and reviews deaths of children within the Bury, Oldham and Rochdale area. Steven Senior reported that the annual report provides an analysis of death across a 3-year period and also includes key demographic data on the population of children in Bury, Rochdale and Oldham, as well as data in important contributors to child mortality, such as rates of premature births, child poverty and homelessness among families with children.

Steven Senior reported that the number of rates of child deaths in Bury have been similar to the England average. Children living in areas of higher deprivation continue to be more likely to die, as are children from Asian ethnic background. Rates of child poverty and homelessness have increased since 2020/21 in all three areas covered by the report and the know modifiable risk factors in reviews of child deaths were highlighted.

Steven Senior outlined the recommendations from the report which included, taking note of the worsening in measures of child poverty and to ensure that anti-poverty measures address increases in childhood poverty; reducing the overall levels of smoking, alcohol and drug misuse in pregnancy; that the promotion of safe sleeping arrangements is still required; and to raise awareness around the increased risk of death and illnesses faced by children born to those parents who are close blood relatives and that genetic counselling and testing services are being offered appropriately.

Will Blandamer reported that in reflecting on the recommendations within the report, it feels like there is always more to do. There has been good progress made around smoking in pregnancy and it would be useful to share the understanding of that process and any further work we can do around smoking and substance misuse. Will Blandamer referred to safe sleeping arrangements and advised that it would be useful to bring this to a future Health and Wellbeing Board.

In response to a member’s question around raising awareness of consanguinity, Steven Senior reported that work around this could be brought to a future Health and Wellbeing Board meeting for discussion, but firstly he would like to take time to look at what work has worked well in other Local Authority areas as well as community engagement.  In relation to congenital chromosome abnormalities, Steven Senior advised that some of the deaths outlined within the report are not because of parents being related, congenital abnormalities tend to be within communities with arranged marriages and explained that Blackburn and Darwin Council had completed some work around this. Jon Hobday further advised that work around consanguinity would be around helping people be informed but firstly ensuring that the approach is around this work is correct. Cathy Fines advised of work done around 10 years ago in Bury, which was an information campaign around congeniality, with leaflets around empowering choices and this is something the Health and Wellbeing Board may wish to revisit.

Jeanette Richards advised around the positive work being done in relation to safe sleeping through Bury’s Integrated Safeguarding Partnership around the whole baby’s environment and referred to lifestyle issues that may potentially escalate the risks of safe sleeping. Jeanette Richards reported that there is work to do around providing easily accessible advice around Early Help and this will be discussed further at the Children’s Strategic Partnership Board, to understand where the issues are and how to address them.

Councillor Tariq referred to the report and advised that in Bury, babies are delivered at Bolton Hospital as well as North Manchester Hospital and asked how the recommendations from this report can be streamlined to ensure that information is being sent to all social workers, health visitors and the information is provided across other services. In response, Jon Hobday advised that there are good links within the maternity services, and we will continue to build on these as well as partnership working.  All front-line services as a system need to work collectively to work out what the key things are that need to be addressed and ensure that we are confident as a system, it has robust mechanisms to address issues on the front line.

A discussion took place around safe sleeping and the importance of providing as much information as possible around the risk of child death. The Board was advised of the safer sleeping toolkit, which is a tool for professionals to provide advice in a realistic way.

It was agreed:

1.           To note the recommendations outlined within the draft CDOP annual report 2023-2024.

2.           To add to the Health and Wellbeing Board forward planner an item around Safe Sleeping and consanguinity.