The concept of child death reviews is not a new one; systems for review have been set in
place in a number of countries including in the US where reviews were established in
some States in the late 1970s (Johnson & Covington 2011). In the UK particular types of
child deaths have been reviewed for some time in some regions, for example the Avon
area (Fleming et al, 2004), and some deaths were reviewed in specific regions as part of
the CEMACH ‘Why Children Die: A Pilot Study’ (Pearson 2008).