The Center for Child Protection and all of our many agency partners, collectively named the Child Protection Team, held their annual Summit on April 23, 2008. The Summit is a forum for the Center for Child Protection and all its team partners to revisit successes for the year, make plans for the future, and renew our commitment to work together. Some of the successes shared this past year include the following:

• This year, the Team filed its first case in February 2008 under new "continuous sexual abuse" legislation, which helps ensure more effective prosecutions of sexual abuse cases.

• The Center began providing more follow-up and support services for Spanish-speaking families with its new Family Advocate Program.

• Child Protective Services approved the placement of two caseworkers at Dell Children's Medical Center to more quickly respond to children who may be at risk.

• In addition, $31,254 was generated for multidisciplinary team training to ensure team members have the latest skills and training to effectively investigate crimes against children.

• All in all, $22,983,287 has been raised to assist child abuse investigations and child abuse victims since the creation of the Center for Child Protection.

Looking to the future, the Center for Child Protection will turn its attention to deepen our partnership with medical services at the new Center and offering services to child abuse victims of all ages. And as the Center for Child Protection prepares to move to its new building later this month, we look forward to the future co-location of agency partners nearby. The Austin Police Department, Travis County Sheriff, Travis County District Attorney, and Child Protective Services have plans to locate offices on the same property. The commitment to the Child Protection Team is symbolized by signing an interagency agreement each year on this day, and is a milestone in creating a collaboration that more effectively and gently helps children and their protective families survive and thrive after the devastating discovery of abuse.

Travis County Child Fatality Review Team announced reasons why children died in our community last year and how the community can help prevent future deaths. This collaboration was begun a decade ago and involves all the first responders, such as medical personnel, case workers, and law enforcement, meeting every other month to painstakingly review each child death. This year, the news conference held on April 23, 2008 focused on three specific areas to keep more children safe. These were the prevention of infant suffocation, motor vehicle fatalities, and teen suicide. A prevention poster "Sleeping Infants Need Special Care" designed by The MOD Studio, was also distributed and is available online.

The following are the key findings from the CFRT Annual Report this year:

• In 2007, Travis County marked 125 child deaths, which included 19 deaths from accidental causes. Of the accidental deaths, 9 died in motor vehicle accidents, 7 died from asphyxia, 2 died from drowning, and 1 died of substance abuse. No children died as a result of being left in a hot car (hyperthermia) or in a house fire.

• There were four suicides in 2007 or twice as many as occurred in 2006. This is more than twice the annual child suicide rate of between one or two over the last decade. Four of these deaths were teens who were between 16- and 17-years-old.

• The CFRT also noted a disturbing, emerging trend seen in the first three months of 2008; 12 accidental deaths of children have already been reported. Seven infants died from asphyxiation, and five children died in motor vehicle accidents.

We are grateful to community volunteer and statistician Dan McClellan for his work and expertise in compiling the statistics for the last decade. Ultimately, the knowledge gained from this collaboration helps inform parents and community leaders so we can all play a role in keeping our children safe from harm.