Written question WQ99767

The death of any care-experienced young person is deeply distressing for all people concerned. The Welsh Government recognises the importance of ensuring that appropriate lessons are identified and shared from the deaths of care-experienced children and young people.

A number of existing arrangements provide mechanisms through which individual deaths may be considered. The Child Death Review Programme collects and analyses information on all deaths of children in Wales and of Welsh-resident children who die elsewhere. The Procedural Response to Unexpected Death in Childhood sets a minimum standard for responding to unexpected deaths in infancy and childhood. In addition, where the relevant criteria are met, the Single Unified Safeguarding Review process provides a single, proportionate mechanism for reviewing the most serious incidents, including deaths of care-experienced young people.

However, we acknowledge that there is not currently a single national mechanism that systematically captures or reviews all deaths of care-experienced young people or aggregates learning from those deaths. The Welsh Government also does not routinely collect comprehensive national data on the number of deaths of all care leavers. In light of this, I will consider how information about the deaths of care leavers is collected and considered nationally.