RI health officials promise to keep children safer

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WJAR) — Officials from the Rhode Island Department of Health, along with the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, presented a plan Monday that details ways to better identify at-risk children.

The plan comes after a scathing report from the Office of the Child Advocate was released months ago. It outlined how children, some of whom were known to DCYF already, suffered a fatal or near fatal incident inside their homes.

The presentation examined 31 incidents where children either died or almost died from the beginning of 2016 to the end of 2017. Although the sample isn't large, it is helping officials get on the right track, according to Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, who is the director of the Rhode Island Department of Health.

“This tells us who we need to be focusing on when we’re tending to child fatalities or near fatalities," she said.

Eighty-four percent of these incidents happened to children under five years old, while 55 percent of the incidents involved children under the age of one.

Along with injuries and neglect, the causes of these incidents also include unsafe sleep and ingestion of substances.

DCYF said that they haven't properly identified homes where there is suboxone present, and some children, especially older ones, have been able to get their hands on it -- and that is a dangerous situation.

“It speaks to the fact that young children that live in families where substance abuse disorder is a prevailing issue. We need to be able to tend to that," said Trista Piccola, who is the director of the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Pat Serpa has been outspoken on the topic since the report from the Office of the Child Advocate was released, saying that Rhode Island needs to do better.

“This has to happen," said Serpa of overwhelming improvements. "We can’t have any more dead babies in this state.”

She said she is encouraged by work that has been outlined by state officials and hopes that the plans they put in place have the best interest of the children in mind.

“We’ve got to get them in the womb, or freshly out of the womb," she said.

As far as an implementation schedule, the new set of plans should be put in place by October.