Posts Tagged ‘child’

The Arizona Child Fatality Review Program

October 18th, 2011

The death of any child is a tragedy – for the family and for the community.  Almost 20 years ago, an idea was created to systematically review all child deaths in order to find ways to prevent similar deaths going forward.  In past years this focus has raised the awareness about child drowning or the importance of putting babies to sleep on their backs or making sure all children are always secured in car seats. 

The Arizona Child Fatality Review Program was created in 1993 (A.R.S. § 36-342, 36-3501-4). The statute created an independent State Child Fatality Review Team.  The types of members of the team are set in legislation; representatives from the Academy of Pediatrics and from the ADES Divisions of Developmental Disabilities and Children and Family Services, as well as from law enforcement and a medical examiner make up the team. 

The team’s role is to produce an annual report to the Governor and legislature that summarizes the findings, and make recommendations based on promising and proven strategies regarding the prevention of child deaths. The team is also charged to study the adequacy of statutes, ordinances, rules, training and services to determine what changes are needed to decrease the incidence of preventable child fatalities and (as appropriate) take steps to implement these changes. These recommendations have been used to educate communities, initiate legislative action, and develop prevention programs.   

Our role is to provide the needed professional and administrative support to the state and local teams and analyze data from all death reviews. Reviews of child deaths are completed by 12 local child fatality teams located throughout Arizona.  The State Child Fatality Review Team operates independently of the ADHS and the annual report doesn’t always reflect the viewpoints of state leadership, but it does always reflect what the team of experts believes is in the best interest in preventing children’s deaths.  The next report is due out in mid-November.  You will be able to find historical reports and this year’s report (when it’s out) on our Child Fatality Review website.

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Posted in Prevention

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Fresh Childcare Center Rules Go Live

October 4th, 2010

The new child care center standards went into effect last week.  Check out our newly revamped child care licensing website, which has the latest for parents, consumers, childcare operators and others.  Our Licensing, rules, and all the other ADHS experts who contributed to the new rules and did a fantastic job.  Our success was directly tied to the open and inclusive process that brought to the table the expertise of our internal staff, our partners and the public.  These changes will go far to ensure a healthy and safe environment for our kids.  Our childcare licensing folks have been busy providing training events throughout the state so that providers are up to speed on all the changes by October 1st.  Operators can also find our new licensing checklist on the new website.

Several of the new changes will support and reinforce our Empower Pack guidelines.  The new rules for childcare centers will reinforce: 1) “tummy time” each day for infants; 2) lessons plans each week that include opportunities for each child to participate in structured large muscle physical activity; 3) policies and procedures for limiting TV watching & computer use; 4) limits on the amount of screen time including documenting the screen time in minutes when it is included in the lesson plan; and 5) serving 1% or skim milk for older kids; and 6) limiting fruit juice to 100% juice (120 ml/day for children younger than 6 and 180 ml/day for older kids).

After the first of the year, the Empower program will be celebrating its first anniversary and we’ll be  putting together the 1st performance evaluation report.  Right after that, we’ll take another look at the guidelines and have some discussions around the need to update them based on the evaluation results, partner input and the rules changes.

Again, thank you for all your effort this year.  Not only have we have had a wonderful time working more closely with each other, the children of Arizona are getting a healthy start in life thanks to our work.  You make a difference every day.

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Posted in Licensing, Prevention

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Child Nutrition Act

June 29th, 2010

As you remember from previous posts- the Child Nutrition Act has been introduced in the Senate and moved out of Committee.  This month, a bipartisan group of members in the U.S. House introduced a similar bill to reauthorize and amend the Child Nutrition Act, “Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act.”  The bill is posted at Improving Nutrition for Americas Children Act, but it’s 253 pages long- so don’t print!

The bill in the Senate to include elements of our Empower Pack . The Amendment directs the Secretary of Agriculture to work with the Secretary of HHS to encourage state licensing agencies to include wellness standards within state licensing standards in order to ensure that licensed and regulated child care centers and family child care homes provide physical activity opportunities, limit screen time and offer food consistent with the healthy meals patterns and nutrition standards.  More than 31 million school kids participate in the National School Lunch Program and 11 million qualify for the School Breakfast Program. Many children get ½ of their daily calories at schools- making this program a great leverage point to improve nutrition for kids by placing more rigorous nutrition standards on the foods that are served in the program.

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