The next milestone for the process came in 2010 when the Department of Children, Schools and Families was replaced by the Department for Education, and the child death review process and CDOPs then became the responsibility of the new department. At that time, the statutory forms were also reviewed and updated, and a set of supplementary forms were introduced, designed to ask more detailed questions depending on the cause of death. These were implemented, and local CDOPs began to develop their own amendments to these forms to suit the needs of their individual panels.

The process remained largely unchanged until the beginning of the review into the role and function of LSCBs conducted by Alan Wood MP in 2016. Alan Wood’s review identified a number of challenges with the way CDOPs worked and the organisation of the process, and made a number of recommendations. These included: a change in the government department sponsoring the process from the Department for Education to the then Department of Health (now the Department for Health and Social Care); recognition of the need for child deaths to be reviewed over a population size that allows a sufficient number of deaths to be analysed for patterns, themes and trends; and the implementation of a national database to collate the information gathered by CDOPs.

Alongside the above activity, the report of the Child Death Review Database Development Project was published in July 2016. This project was commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) on behalf of NHS England and the Health and Social Care division of the Scottish Government. The purpose was to investigate whether and how it might be possible to create a national database of information collected in the course of child death reviews conducted by CDOPs in England and other Child Death Review agencies. The findings of this project demonstrated overwhelming support for the creation of a national child death review database, both from parents and professional stakeholders. 

In April 2018, the NCMD was commissioned to reduce preventable child mortality in England by HQIP on behalf of NHS England. Following a procurement process, a contract was awarded to a collaboration led by the University of Bristol and involving University of Oxford’s National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, UCLPartners and QES. The database was launched on 1 April 2019 and data collection from CDOPs began.

The NCMD received funding for four years in the first instance – from April 2018 to March 2022. In the first year, the database was developed in consultation with key stakeholders, including bereaved families, and then data collection began on 1 April 2019. In addition to deaths occurring from 1 April 2019, NCMD also collected information on children who died prior to that date where their child death review was still ongoing on that date.

Two years later, the NCMD held two complete years’ worth of data on child deaths – so in May 2021, it was able to begin reporting on key issues and trends in child mortality. Five academic papers, two data releases, two thematic reports and a briefing were published in that year, generating significant interest from clinicians, professionals, and the public at large.

In the second phase of the NCMD programme, with renewed funding for three years, the NCMD continues to publish data on key issues in infant and child health. During this phase we are also broadening and deepening our collaborations, both in terms of data linkages and supporting charities and direct policy change.