Child Fatalities Due to Maltreatment: The Role of Quality Data

Children's deaths from maltreatment are especially distressing because they involve a failure on the part of adults who were responsible for protecting them. Questions have been raised as to whether the federal National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS), which is based on voluntary state reports to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), fully captures the number of circumstances of child fatalities from maltreatment. This book examines the extent to which HHS collects and reports comprehensive information on child fatalities from maltreatment and looks to strengthen data quality, expand available information, improve sharing, and estimate better the costs and benefits of collecting national data on near fatalities.