Each Child. Every Community.

The North Carolina Joint Regulatory Reform Committee filed a report with recommendations to eliminate or consolidate many commissions and boards, including the Child Fatality Task Force. Representative Marilyn Avila, co-chair of the committee, is collecting information regarding the committees proposed for elimination.

The Child Fatality Task Force has prepared a Fact Sheet that can be downloaded and shared. The text also is included below.

Child Fatality Task Force Fact Sheet

The Child Fatality Task Force is a legislative study commission which makes recommendations to the General Assembly and Governor for their consideration. Recommendations are based on data, research, and evidence-informed practice and reflect hundreds of hours of volunteer input. For each of the past several years, experts have donated more than 1,000 hours of their time and consultation towards formation of the action agenda. The Task Force is supported by a single staff person housed in the Division of Public Health and is co-chaired by volunteers who are members of the Task Force.

Over the past twenty years, recommendations made by the Task Force that were subsequently passed by legislators and approved by the Governor have contributed to an estimated 9,200 more children reaching adulthood . Since about 1,600 children die each year, it is as if about five years of child death have been averted.

Specific policy recommendations from the Child Fatality Task Force to the General Assembly that have become law and helped save lives include the following:

Graduated Driver License: GDL laws in the nation. Since that time, crashes among 16 year olds have declined 38% and crashes North Carolina passed one of the first and most effective and recognized among 17 year olds have declined 20%.

Infant Mortality Reduction: Strategies advanced by the Child Fatality Task Force and adopted by the General Assembly include Safe North Carolina recently achieved its lowest infant mortality rate on record. Sleep programs to help reduce SIDS and other infant death, the ECU High Risk Maternity Clinic to provide vital prenatal care in eastern NC, 17-P to help avoid second (or subsequent) preterm births, and the Preconception Health/Folic Acid Campaign to help assure more healthy pregnancies and births.

Other reductions in unintentional injury: Due to the sustained focus on reducing child deaths, NC has moved from being ranked in the bottom 10 nationally for child deaths (ages 1-14) to in the middle of the nation. Since car safety laws passed, the number of deaths among young children in motor vehicle crashes has declined by approximately 25%. Since the helmet law passed, the number of bicycle deaths for children under age 15 declined by 60%. Policies promoting broader use of smoke alarms helped lead to a 44% decrease in the number of children killed by fire and flame.

Improvements in child welfare: The caseloads of Child Protective Services staff have been cut in third –from about 1 worker for every 30 abused and neglected children in 1991 to about 1 worker for every 10 or 11 abused and neglected children today. This reduction allows staff additional time to provide services to vulnerable children to assure that they can grow up in permanent, stable families. Thanks to other improvements in the child welfare system, the rate of children removed from their homes to live with foster families has declined more than 10%.