A study of child deaths in the region resulting from abuse and neglect found no cases in Suffolk during the 12 months ending June 30, 2013, according to preliminary results.

But across the region, the Hampton Roads Regional Child Fatality Review Team, which released its latest annual report at the YWCA in Norfolk on Thursday, reported 12 fatalities.

Meanwhile, the team reported a continuation of the region’s outsized representation in statewide statistics: more than a third of 33 child fatalities across Virginia occurred in the Eastern region, and that proportion will become even greater if appealed cases are upheld.

According to the latest census data, 23 percent of Virginia children lived in the Eastern Region in 2010.

“The bottom line is that child abuse and neglect, which in some cases can lead to death, is preventable, and everyone can help in the prevention,” said Bessie Marie Renner, executive director of Champions for Children, formerly Prevent Child Abuse Hampton Roads.

One reason Eastern region statistics were “always higher” is that “we have been counting for 20 years (and) the rest of the state just started,” said Betty Wade Coyle, executive director emeritus of Champions for Children, and report author.

Researchers obtained information from the Department of Social Services and its local agencies. Though for fiscal 2013 only localized figures for the former were released, they looked at both founded and unfounded cases.

Despite the rosier picture presented for 2013, Suffolk had one founded and six unfounded child fatalities in fiscal 2012, plus seven founded fatalities — unfounded cases were not detailed for these years — between fiscal 2008 and 1996, which was the final year detailed in the 2013 report.

Of the 47 child deaths Eastern Region social services agencies investigated in fiscal 2013, 31 were unfounded, according to the report, while 18 of those were associated with an “unsafe sleeping environment.”

Karen Remley, founding director of the M. Foscue Brock Institute for Community and Global Health at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said that babies had been placed to sleep on their back — the correct way — throughout history, before American pediatrician Benjamin Spock advocated in the 1950s that it increased the risk of them choking on vomit.

Spock was wrong, she said, noting that one recommendation of the 2013 report is to reach out to all health-care providers to ensure they are “armed with the right information.”

“Those that were trained in the 1970s and 1980s may not have gotten the message,” Remley said.

The report makes numerous recommendations, but others Remley specifically cited were:

• Partnering with the medical examiner offices to look at the charts of babies that have died in the past five years, seeking “other risk factors.”
• Look at how best practice information is presented, ensuring it will “make sense to the community.”
• Work with the General Assembly to legislate for the chief medical examiner to share information on SIDS deaths with the delivering “hospital (and) doctor … (and) with the doctor that cared for the baby … so they can do quality improvement.”

Science and research should be applied to child abuse and neglect, Remley urged. “How do we get the right services to the right people at the right time?” she asked.

“We need to use that research to get the resources. I think we need to approach the problem the same way we have heart attack, the same way we have strokes.”

Coyle said, “We don’t invest in our babies, we invest in our jails. And that’s a bad way of looking at things.”

The team, according to Coyle, would this year look at swaddling guidelines, educating dads and other non-maternal caregivers, providing background screening for caregivers, and dealing with poverty in the context of child abuse and neglect fatalities.

“We need to look at some of the underlying things impacting people’s ability to care for their babies, and that’s a harder nut to crack,” she said.

Resources for parents and caregivers are available at www.kidspriorityone.org.