Q&A
Reporting practices for child fatalities and commissioner discretion
1:39:30
·
120 sec
Council Member Stevens inquires about ACS's reporting practices for child fatalities, particularly in cases without surviving siblings. Commissioner Dannhauser explains the process of learning from these incidents and mentions plans to bring in external experts for case reviews.
- ACS conducts human factors debriefings and staff interviews to analyze fatality cases
- The commissioner has discretion in reporting, considering factors like the presence of surviving siblings
- ACS plans to reintroduce external expert involvement in case reviews
Althea V. Stevens
1:39:30
Thank you.
1:39:32
I just have a well, I have a number of questions, but I have a few follow-up questions from, from before.
1:39:39
And just asking, I know when we're talking about, the reports being put out, and and the commissioner having discretion, but I know we said that some of it is around surviving siblings.
1:39:50
What happen if there's no surviving siblings, or is there a reason why we're not reporting our reports then?
1:39:56
Because I know that that's the discretion sometimes with the commissioner to use.
1:39:59
Do you have a reasoning for that?
Jess Dannhauser
1:40:03
First, unfortunately, in the great, majority of cases, there are surviving siblings.
1:40:09
It does change the the the calculation.
1:40:12
Again, I think what's key here is that we make sure we're learning the right lesson.
1:40:17
And so we go through that human factors debriefing.
1:40:21
We do interviews of staff.
1:40:23
We look at all of the ways in which, we could have either made a different decision or put a different intervention in place, where we were involved.
1:40:32
We look at the how recently we were, involved with the family, whether that was a month or 8 years.
1:40:39
And some of these cases that have been publicly reported, it is across that.
1:40:43
And we do that in that way where we, provide that fatality report.
1:40:48
After that, all of that sort of trend analysis and case analysis.
1:40:53
Again, we are gonna bring experts back into that conversation.
1:40:56
That was something that, ACS used to do.
1:41:00
I'm not quite clear when it or why it was taken away, but we're gonna bring that back.
Althea V. Stevens
1:41:04
Yeah.
1:41:05
And when and when you're thinking about it, please see me as a thought partner.
1:41:07
I think that this is one of the things that has been stressing me out a even as coming becoming the chair, and thinking about how do we prevent it and also not just always be reactive, because I think that sometimes we'll be reactive and then we'll put things in place that hurt us down the line because it creates more bureaucracy.
1:41:25
So definitely, see me as a thought partner in partnership.
UNKNOWN
1:41:28
Thank you.
Jess Dannhauser
1:41:28
And we're we're urgent about it, Jared.
1:41:29
We appreciate that.
