News

Wiltshire's area child protection committee has revised its admission and discharge procedures for situations where there has been a previous sudden death of a child in a family, following the death of Matthew Cannings.

Matthew died at the age of 18 weeks in November 1999. His mother Angela was given two life sentences at Winchester Crown Court last week for murdering Matthew and another son Jason in 1991, aged seven weeks.

Following Winchester ACPC's case review, a multi-agency protocol developed by all relevant agencies is now in place to respond to the unexplained death of a child.

Health organisations have improved record-keeping where there is a sudden or unexplained death of a child or children in a family, and pathologists required to carry out post mortems of children must have specialist paediatric training.

Chairperson of Wiltshire area child protection committee Annie Hudson said: "The report recognises that there was substantially more information on the possible causes of early infant death at the time of Matthew's death.

"Although advice was sought from experts in the field of multiple cot deaths, this was not rigorously followed up by a co-ordinated inter-agency approach that would have included the potential need for health, social services and the police to undertake a broader multi-agency assessment of the family's circumstances."