Information Key To Saving At-Risk Infants

By ALEXANDRA DUFRESNE | OP-ED The Hartford Courant

I serve on Connecticut's Child Fatality Review Panel, an interdisciplinary body charged with reviewing unexpected deaths of children. Because so many of the cases we review are of babies, it is hard to shake the feeling that we are always just one week too late.

A natural psychological response of seeing so many dead children is to give up. But fatalism is a luxury we can ill afford.

In the last five months, nine Connecticut children have died of non-medical causes in families currently or recently involved with the Department of Children and Families, according to the Office of the Child Advocate. Six were infants six months or younger. Data show that over the last 13 years, children at greatest risk of dying of non-medical causes in Connecticut are infants between birth and six months.

Read more here: http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-op-dufresne-child-deaths-prevention-connecticut-20140609,0,6945054.story

Alexandra Dufresne is a staff attorney in the Child Abuse Project at the Center for Children's Advocacy in Hartford and a member of Connecticut's Child Fatality Review Panel.