Report a perinatal, infant, child or adolescent death

Perinatal, infant and child deaths must be reported within 28 days to the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Consultative Council (CCOPMM).

Please note: We no longer accept notifications by email or fax. Please use our new online forms below.

1. Notify us

Access our online reporting form for:

• Stillbirth 
• Neonatal death
• Post neonatal infant death
• Child and adolescent death

Please refer to the relevant preview below of the questions you will be required to answer to complete a death notification form. Please make sure you have all the information available before starting the form. The form does not save when partially completed, so needs to be finished once started.

• Preview of stillbirth notification form
• Preview of neonatal death notification form
• Preview of post neonatal infant death notification form
• Preview of child and adolescent death notification form

2. Review the death

Health services must review every perinatal, paediatric and maternal death that occurs in their hospital, as well as deaths elsewhere when the patient was predominately treated at one of their hospitals.

The extent of a death review depends on the type of death, and if it was expected or unexpected.

All internal reviews should be submitted to CCOPMM as part of step 3.    

Health services that provide perinatal services should review perinatal deaths in line with the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand’s guidelines for perinatal mortality.

3. Submit your review

Within 1-3 days of completing a death notification you will receive a response from CCOPMM that includes access to a SharePoint folder to upload documents and reviews to. The documents required to complete a CCOPMM report are specified in the following checklists:

• Stillbirth report checklist
• Neonatal death report checklist
• Post neonatal infant death report checklist
• Child and adolescent death report checklist

4. CCOPMM case review

Stillbirth and neonatal death

Once all information is in, CCOPMM reviews all deaths to determine:

• if the death was avoidable
• any contributing factors, including potential deficiencies in clinical care or system-wide faults
• classification 
• any recommendations for improvement
• preventable factors such as smoking in pregnancy, maternal age, family violence, and other social and demographic factors.

Post-neonatal infant, child and adolescent death review

CCOPMM receives death certificates from Births, Deaths and Marriages and seeks information from hospital case records, doctors, pathology departments, and coronial services.

CCOPMM reviews complex or contentious cases to:

• classify the death as one of:
  • determined at birth
  • sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI), including sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
  • unintentional injury
  • acquired disease
  • intentional injury
  • undetermined.
• identify potential preventable factors
• make recommendations on clinical or system improvements.

What do we do with this information?

CCOPMM reports annually to share the lessons and improvements from perinatal, infant, child and adolescent deaths in Victoria.

Your information is confidential

The confidentiality of information provided to CCOPMM is strictly protected under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008. CCOPMM members cannot share any documents or information to a third party.