• Adolescent Health
• Child Welfare
• Mental health
• Nursing
• Paediatrics

Can the principles underlying the ‘zone’ (or ‘scope’) of parental responsibility promote parents’ participation in providing consent for their children? In a judgement relating to parental consent for puberty blockers, Lieven J noted1 that there were few circumstances where a child’s treatment could not be authorised solely by parental consent:

In fact, the only case where…(a judge) has found a legal requirement to come to Court in respect of treatment of a child, where both parents consent….is the case of a non-therapeutic sterilisation of an 11-year-old. In all other contexts, including where the parental decision will lead to a child’s life ending, the Court has imposed no such requirement.

Naturally, there are a range of circumstances where the Court’s approval is necessary, but this is in the context of a clinical disagreement (either between doctors or with the family’s view); or disagreement between those with parental responsibility. Disputes concerning alternative treatments or finely balanced clinical opinions are fact-dependent instances; rather than ‘…examples of any special category of treatment where the Court’s role is required simply because of the nature of the treatment’.

Nevertheless, there are circumstances where the consent of both parents, in unanimous agreement with clinicians over a treatment plan, is not necessarily determinative. G2 was a girl who had been admitted to a seven-bed ‘intensive intervention unit’ for children between 7 and 13 ‘…with a range of mental health problems, including eating disorders and emotional and behavioural disorders’. G lacked competence to …