Health and social services directors presented Chatham County’s annual reports from the Child Fatality Prevention Team (CFPT) and the Community Child Protection Team (CCPT) on June 16 and the Board of Commissioners approved the reports.

Health Director Mike Zelleck and Social Services Director Jenny Christiansen said the teams review preventable child fatalities and active child welfare cases to identify systems changes and improvements. Zelleck told commissioners, "Topics of concern that we've seen in recent years, include traffic safety on these, these windy two-lane roads," and also cited youth mental health and safe firearm storage as recurring issues.

Christiansen said the teams review only child deaths deemed preventable under the state’s updated definitions and that teams continue to examine active cases to identify service gaps. The teams reported reviewing a small number of families each meeting: in 2024 the county accepted 281 reports of abuse and neglect that involved roughly 600 children, while local reviews covered a much smaller subset focused on system-change opportunities.

The CFPT recorded nine child-fatality reviews in the prior year; roughly two-thirds of those reviews determined the deaths were unpreventable. The teams recommended that the state and local partners address the county’s housing challenges — including exploring specialized vouchers — improve coordination across state health and human-service divisions for children with behavioral-health needs, and expand training for the child-welfare workforce to address access to appropriate training and secondary traumatic stress.

The county’s community-based successes noted in the report include an in-county childbirth-class program (including Spanish-language classes), a car-seat safety program that served 162 families in 2024, expanded community-based services and a new North Carolina foster-care prevention pilot called Home Builders. Staff said the county will receive roughly an additional $5,000 in next year’s budget to support the car-seat program.

The board voted to approve the annual reports and asked staff to continue working on the recommendations, including the feasibility of a child advocacy center in the county and strategies to address traffic safety on rural roads.