Dozens of NC children are killed each year. Could DSS reforms save more of them?

North Carolina’s 34-year-old child fatality review system initially led the nation in preventing child fatalities, said Jennie Kristiansen, Chatham County DSS director and a member of the N.C. Child Fatality Task Force. But after 15 years of legislative changes, McLeod said, the system became “disjointed.” There was no collective process, no oversight, and no way to capture all local data and share it with other agencies statewide, she said.