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CDR Teams

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CDR teams originated in 1978 with the creation of a multidisciplinary–agency in Los Angeles County, California to investigate fetal and infant deaths and the escalating violence against children (Durfee, Gellert, & Tilton-Durfee, 1992). These teams were founded on the idea that discrepancies in reporting will occur less when all documents related to a child death are reviewed by a team of professionals with the purpose of sharing information related to the death circumstances (Webster, Schnitzer, Jenny, Ewigman, & Alario, 2003). With this change in procedure, no longer could reports within one agency be isolated from the reports within another agency. It was thought that the unique characteristics of each profession contributed to mismanagement …show more content…

Missouri was the first state with a fully functioning review team (Durfee et al., 1992) and the number of states with a child death review protocol doubled by 1992 (Webster at al.). There was speculation of great variability among the operation and effectiveness of the teams (Webster et al., 2003). This same study revealed that 34 of the 46 states (74%) collecting data were using a standardized form. The authors report that Kentucky established a CDR in 1997 through legislation for state and local review of selective causes of death without any funding. Although interest in reviewing child fatalities among states was growing, by 1999, no universal system of investigation of infant and child deaths had been established (Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect and Committee on Community Health Services). The Committee report tells us that many states had review teams, but these were operating with a lack of consistency of membership, procedures and data collection. They argued for “a centralized database” (p. 1159). Douglas and McCarthy (2011) conducted a review of policy on child deaths and inserted a need to standardize data

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