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Georgia Child Fatality Review panel outlines data gaps, timeline and legislative fixes as prevention priority
Summary
The state Child Fatality Review (CFR) panel briefed the Judiciary — Juvenile committee on its role, findings on causes of child deaths, compliance challenges among local review teams and requested legislative updates to ease statutory timelines and create enforcement and prevention funding.
The Child Fatality Review Panel on Thursday told members of the Judiciary — Juvenile committee that the panel’s primary purpose is to understand how children die in Georgia and to recommend prevention strategies to reduce future deaths.
Panel vice chair Carolyn Altman, a juvenile court judge in Paulding County, said the review process is multidisciplinary and “very heavily informed by law enforcement and DFACS,” and explained the panel’s two goals: to track causes and circumstances of child deaths and to promote systemic prevention efforts.
The panel described a multi-tiered review process that begins at local committees and aggregates to a state panel that includes agency heads and other officials. Local committees are intended to operate in each of Georgia’s 159 counties, Altman said; local panels complete comprehensive reports that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) staff review and elevate to the state panel for prevention recommendations.
GBI Assistant Director Scott Dutton said the GBI has…
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