Fatality/Near Fatality

Sometimes an assessment will come over from Intake marked as a fatality or near-fatality. Explained fatalities and near-fatalities that come over from Intake will not trigger a mandatory assessment. Only assessments with unexplained fatalities/near-fatalities from Intake will become mandatory assessments.

Other times, the assessment will escalate to a fatality or near-fatality situation while the worker is assessing the allegations. In either case, when a fatality/near-fatality assessment is being investigated the workflow and notifications in Casebook change once the assessment contains a fatality or near-fatality assessment reason.

In Casebook, FCMs are able to mark whether an assessment involves a fatality or near fatality.

Recording a fatality/near fatality

To add information about a fatality or near fatality in an assessment if it has not come over from Intake marked as such:

• 1. Go to the Allegations, Mandated Reasons, and Intake Narratives Card and click edit

• 1. Scroll down to the Mandated Reasons card. The first two questions on this card related to fatality/near fatality

     1. Does this assessment involve a fatality?

     2. Does this assessment involve a near fatality?

• 1. Select "yes" where applicable and type the name of the child involved in the fatality or near-fatality. Note, the related person field is now marked as required with a red asterisk.

  2. Click Save

When a worker manually escalated an assessment to a fatality/near-fatality, no workflow event is automatically created on the history page. Workers should create a note with the date, time, and other relevant details with the assessment is marked as a fatality/near-fatality.

Notifications about Fatality/Near Fatality

Regardless of whether an assessments came over from Intake marked as a fatality/near-fatality or was marked as such by a worker, the following actions occur in Casebook:

• • An email notification is sent to supervisors (if the fatality/near-fatality occurred in their county)

  • An email notification is sent to fatality unit workers

  • An email notification is sent to executive workers

    • An example of the email notification can be seen below. Both notifications are the same and read, "There’s been a fatality or near-fatality in [county]. LINK to assessment for more information. Reported on [date/time the assessment was created] and [Assessment ID].”

    • If an assessment is marked as near-fatality and escalates to fatality, the same notifications will be sent to fatality unit workers and executive workers.

• • The progress bar at the top of the Assessment breaks into four segments:

    • In Progress > In Supervisor Review > In Central Office Review > Accepted

  • A blue notification box will appear on the Allegations, Mandated Reasons, and Intake Narrative Card on the Assessment page which states the focus child victim was reported as a near fatality or fatality.

• • When the fatality/near-fatality assessment is endorsed to central office another email notification is sent only to fatality unit workers. The email reads, "“A fatality or near-fatality has been submitted for central office review. LINK to assessment for more information. Reported on [date/time of assessment creation] and assessment ID.”

Who receives fatality/ near fatality notifications

All notices in state:

• 1. Executives

  2. Central office fatality supervisors

Notices for their assigned and following counties:

• 1. Local office directors

Notices for their assigned county:

• 1. Supervisors

Workflow in Casebook for Fatality/Near Fatality Assessment

Safety Assessments

In Casebook, workers are reminded to perform a safety assessment for every victim of every allegation. A Fatalities/near-fatality assessment may or may not be associated with an allegation. A fatality/near-fatality itself is not an allegation in the same sense; they do not get substantiated/unsubstantiated. In these circumstances, Casebook does not require the worker to complete a safety assessment. Safety assessments are only required to be completed on assessments that have allegations that will be substantiated/unsubstantiated.

If a worker adds an allegation to an assessment that came over as just a fatality/near-fatality, he/she would then be required to perform safety assessments of any victims of the added allegations. The only case in which no safety assessment would be required is when no allegations are ever added.

Submission and Approval

Once an assessment has been noted to involve a fatality or near fatality, the workflow bar at the top of the overview/summary page will have four states:

• • In Progress

  • In Supervisor Review (renamed)

  • In Central Office Review (new)

  • Accepted

And the workflow looks like:

• 1. An FCM will complete the assessment and submit it to his/her supervisor.

  2. A supervisor will review the assessment and either:

     1. Send back for edits

     2. Or, Endorse to Central Office

  3. Central Office Executive Users will receive an email notifying them that they need to review an assessment. Upon review, Central Office will be able to:

• • 1. Return for edits

    2. Approve (this will close the assessment)

DCS administrators have a more intensive workflow for near fatalities and fatalities because these assessments need to go to the judge for final approval of substantiation. This helps prevent inappropriate court outcomes and protects children who might still be in unsafe situations.