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Health News: Cot Death - Follow-up groups under scrutiny

Paediatricians have raised concerns about excluding parents of suspected cot death babies from multi-agency follow-up meetings.

The news follows the relaunching of the Sussex protocol for investigating child deaths, following last year's report chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy into standardised investigations around cot deaths.

This recommended that a multi-agency care discussion meeting should take place eight to 12 weeks after the main post-mortem tests to review the infant's history and circumstances of death.

Paediatricians were finding it difficult to accept the idea of excluding parents from meetings in the current climate of parent involvement, said Dr Anne Livesey, author of the protocol.

She also said a key recommendation of the Kennedy report - for a paediatrician with experience of sudden death in infants to visit bereaved families within 24 hours - was difficult for authorities without sufficient funding.


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