Bill > HF4408

This bill requires the Department of Children, Youth, and Families to make information about child fatalities and near fatalities publicly available on its website, including the cause and circumstances, the child's age and gender, and details about previous maltreatment reports or investigations, while still protecting private data and the identities of those who provided information. It also mandates that reports from joint or local review teams, which are multidisciplinary groups that investigate critical incidents involving children, be made public within 60 days of being received by the state. Additionally, the bill requires local review teams to interview caseworkers involved in critical incidents and prohibits retaliation against those caseworkers for participating, and it modifies the requirements for the child mortality review panel's annual report to include an analysis of data from 2022-2024 in the report due by December 15, 2027, to identify trends and inform recommendations for improving the child protection system.