Background After death care refers to the time immediately after the death of a baby, child or young person (BCYP) and management of this significantly impacts the bereavement journey for families. For the 30% of Birmingham families who identify as Muslim (Office for National Statistics. How life has changed in Birmingham: Census 2021. ONS; 2023), being able to access swift transition after death to burial represents culturally appropriate care.

Aims The Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH) Palliative and Bereavement Service reviewed what outcome measures could reflect our ability to achieve culturally appropriate care.

Methods BCH collected time to hospital release of deceased BCYP and time to burial from 1 August 2023 to 29 February 2024, and this was effectively embedded into ongoing hospital bereavement data collection. To consider after death care in non-hospital settings, we also collaborated with Acorns Children’s Hospice (Birmingham).

Results There were 61 deaths in BCH and complete data available for 59. The average time to release from BCH was 5.6 days with 24% released same or next day, and 51% released within four days. A coroner referral caused delays with average 7.7 days (1.8 days without referral) to release, only 3% release same or next day (62%) and 29% released within 4 days (90%). The hospice lacked data, and only time to burial was available for 6 of 19 deaths in the same period, also indicating delay (average 43 days to burial compared to 21 with no coroner referral).

Conclusion It is essential that data and standards are relevant to the community. Based on experiences supporting Muslim families we added after death care measures and found unnecessary coroner referral could cause harm. With Medical Examiner legislation changes imminent we can now measure the after death care impact of this. We hope to engage with the local Muslim community on outcome relevance, findings and establish the current factors in delay.