Thursday, March 28, 2024

Child fatalities in Eastern Region of Virginia up last year

Although overall child deaths across the state caused by abuse or neglect held steady from 2016 to 2017 the numbers are still too high, while deaths of children because of abuse or neglect locally increased by 25 percent.

In Fiscal Year 2017 there were 16 deaths due to abuse or neglect in the Eastern Region, which encompasses all of Hampton Roads, compared to 12 the previous year.

Wednesday the Eastern Region Child Fatality Review Team released their report for FY 2017 (July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017). While the region (the cities of Hampton, Chesapeake, Newport News, Williamsburg, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, Suffolk, and Franklin, and the counties of Accomack, Isle of Wight, Surry, Southampton, Northampton, James City, and York-Poquoson) accounts for just 23 percent of the state’s children, it accounted for 35.5 percent of all child deaths involving abuse or neglect.

Dr. Michelle Clayton, a member of the fatality review team and the medical director for the child abuse program at Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughter’s, said that in addition to the 16 deaths due to abuse or neglect, there were 25 other child deaths in the region which were ruled “unfounded” and not because of abuse/neglect. One case remains open.

“When looking at the total number of founded fatalities in the Eastern Region our numbers continue to be relatively high compared to the rest of the state,” Clayton said.

Of the 16 “founded” deaths, 11 (68 percent) were infants who had not yet reached their first birthday, while overall 94 percent of the children who died were aged 3 or younger.

During FY 2017 there were 126 total cases investigated statewide, with 34 percent of them taking place in this region. That’s down from 41 percent of all statewide case investigations in FY 2016.

Seven of the cases locally involved children or their families had current or previous contact with social services, and two of the families involved had an active social services case.

The team also determined that approximately 86 percent of the caretakers involved in the abuse or neglect findings were biological parents.

The report identified poverty and substance abuse as contributing family factors in a “large number” of the child fatalities.

“Parental substance abuse is increasing at an extremely concerning rate,” Clayton said.

She said the team is recommending to the state that data collection needs to be more uniform and release of information to the public more timely, and that they need to explore ways to share data across agencies, including social services and health.

John Mangalonzo
John Mangalonzohttp://wydaily.com
John Mangalonzo (john@localdailymedia.com) is the managing editor of Local Voice Media’s Virginia papers – WYDaily (Williamsburg), Southside Daily (Virginia Beach) and HNNDaily (Hampton-Newport News). Before coming to Local Voice, John was the senior content editor of The Bellingham Herald, a McClatchy newspaper in Washington state. Previously, he served as city editor/content strategist for USA Today Network newsrooms in St. George and Cedar City, Utah. John started his professional journalism career shortly after graduating from Lyceum of The Philippines University in 1990. As a rookie reporter for a national newspaper in Manila that year, John was assigned to cover four of the most dangerous cities in Metro Manila. Later that year, John was transferred to cover the Philippine National Police and Armed Forces of the Philippines. He spent the latter part of 1990 to early 1992 embedded with troopers in the southern Philippines as they fought with communist rebels and Muslim extremists. His U.S. journalism career includes reporting and editing stints for newspapers and other media outlets in New York City, California, Texas, Iowa, Utah, Colorado and Washington state.

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