Deaths and hospital admissions for malnourishment of children known to social services

The request was successful.

Good afternoon,

I would like to request the following information, relating to your department for children’s social care.

Could you please tell me:

1) How many children, who were known to your social services department, died between 1st January 2017 – 30th November 2021? (Including those dates)
1i. Please specify how many of those occurred in each year - 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021.
1ii. Please provide the ages of the children, and the cause of death.

2) How many children, who were known to your social services department, were admitted to hospital with malnourishment between 1st January 2017 – 30th November 2021? (Including those dates)
2i. Please specify how many of those occurred in each year - 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021.
2i. Please provide the ages of the children.

Please provide your response in an Excel format.

Yours faithfully,

Charlotte Lynch

westsussex@infreemation.co.uk, West Sussex County Council

Dear Charlotte Lynch

Thank you for your request which has been assigned reference FOI/3178

Freedom of Information request - Deaths and hospital admissions for
malnourishment of children known to social services

If you have submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) or the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), we aim to
respond within the statutory timescale of 20 working days, i.e. by or on
07/01/2022. However please be aware that many of our services continue to
experience pressures due to the Covid-19 pandemic so your response may be
delayed beyond that timescale.

Should you have any further enquiries concerning this request, please
reply to this email leaving the subject line unchanged.

Yours sincerely,
West Sussex County Council

 

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westsussex@infreemation.co.uk, West Sussex County Council

Dear Charlotte Lynch

Ref FOI/3178

Thank you for your enquiry about deaths and hospital admissions for
malnourishment. 

In order to try and identify and locate the information that you have
asked for the Council reasonably requires some clarification of your
request. I will need this information before we can take this matter
further.

In both your questions you ask about children 'who were known to your
social services department'. Please could you clarify whether you intend
this to refer only to children who were already known to the social
services department, or whether you wish to include children whose cases
were reported to the social services department (for instance by the
hospital) because of the circumstances surrounding their death or
admission?

Please send your clarification by responding to this email. Please do not
amend the Subject line.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Dave Loveman

Customer Relations Manager

Hi Dave,

The former, please. I intend this to refer only to children who were already known to the social services department.

Many thanks,

Charlotte Lynch

westsussex@infreemation.co.uk, West Sussex County Council

1 Attachment

Dear Charlotte Lynch,

Our Ref: FOI/3178

On 07/12/2021 you made the following request for information, which has
been dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.

Deaths and hospital admissions for malnourishment of children known to
social services

We have now completed a search for the information which you requested and
confirm that this Authority holds data relevant to your request.

Q1) How many children, who were known to your social services department,
died between 1st January 2017 – 30th November 2021? (Including those
dates)

Please see attached spreadsheet with data for child deaths in the last 5
years (2017-2021). Please note: We have provided the information on number
of deaths by year and by age for those known to Children's Social Care.We
cannot provide the cause of death, as that is not recorded in a reportable
format.

2) How many children, who were known to your social services department,
were admitted to hospital with malnourishment between 1st January 2017 –
30th November 2021? (Including those dates)

We are not able to provide the data on malnourishment, as this may be
recorded on the system but would be in free text fields. This would mean
manually checking thousands of child records therefore we must apply the
exemption detailed below.

I confirm that the authority holds information falling within the
description specified in your request. However, we estimate that the cost
of complying with your request would exceed the appropriate limit. The
appropriate limit has been specified in regulations and for local
authorities it is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one
person spending 2 1/2 working days in determining whether the Department
holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the
information. Under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act the
Department is not obliged to comply with your request and we will not be
processing your request further. Having applied an absolute exemption I am
not required to consider the balance of public interest for and against
disclosure.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most
documents supplied by us will be copyright of West Sussex County Council.

Information you receive which is not subject to WSCC continues to be
protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the
information originated. You must ensure that you gain their permission
before reproducing any third party (non WSCC) information.

If you have any queries about any of this information please contact me
 by responding to this email. Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may
wish to ask for a review of our decision  by responding to this email.
Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our internal
review procedure. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

[1]www.ico.org.uk; or

The Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

West Sussex County Council

 

 

 

 

References

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