After Rotherham, do we need to think again about Gillick competence?

[joanofarchitrave]

I'm not sure we do, but I wonder.

Do the Gillick guidelines get stretched to the point that sexually active children who become known to health services are not thought of as abuse victims but as potentially competent to give consent under age? Do they focus attention on 'is this person competent to give consent' as opposed to 'who the hell is having sex with a 12 year old and in what context?'

I'm absolutely no expert in any of this but I do remember the original Gillick case and the damage caused by applying the age of consent as a blunt instrument, but do we have to look again at this and say that in a sexually exploitative culture that Victoria Gillick was in fact much more right than many (including me) were willing to allow at the time?

Yes I agree entirely Just. As far as I know, there isn't automatic referral at any age, which was kind of the point of the Gillick guidelines, and I agree with you that putting a floor in at 13 would be sensible, but does that then revert to the problems that the guidelines were meant to address, that girls avoid going to their doctor altogether? Would an increase in pregnancies being carried to term in that age group be acceptable if the gain was that more children were protected from exploitation?

Rotherhamite here, erm, no...although I see where you're coming from the real issue from my experience is more classism tbh especially in this case, the main barrier here is people thought they were white trash not due to any confusion over the age of consen, classism towards sex crime victims seems to be a significant problem especially in our society.

This is based on a common misunderstanding of Gillick competence.

Gillick competence is relevant when a minor requests a medical treatment either without the knowledge or without the consent of their parent or guardian. The doctor can decide to offer the treatment without involving the parent on the grounds that the minor shows sufficient maturity and understanding for the decision being made. This only works for medical treatment because of the presumption that a medical treatment proposed by a doctor is already in the patient's best interests. So the doctor and the child agree on what is in the child's best interests. Gillick competence does not apply, for example, where a child is refusing medical treatment against a doctor's best judgement.

I had a student who did her Masters with me on Gillick competence in social services and she alerted me to the common misconception in at least some social services in the UK that Gillick competence can be used to justify a non intervention in cases where adults are having sex with minors on the grounds that the minors are mature enough to consent. That is simply not an equivalent case as sexual activity with an adult cannot be presumed to be in a minor s best interests, indeed it is assumed by law to be abusive. My student wrote a great dissertation on all this and got a distinctions but I am not sure it made any difference even in her limited workplace as the fundamental problem was lack of resources to deal with the huge number of abused children.

I imagine that resources are not there because successive governments run almost entirely by white middle class men have decided that they won't be, because protecting the children of the underclass isn't worth wasting money on. And as a society we agree with this stance. Oh, there's the occasional outcry when some particularly nasty case hits the headlines, and the occasional sacrificial lamb is sacked, but then it all goes quiet again, until the next time.

I really appreciate all your posts and feel a bit better informed.

My student's constituency was children from deprived backgrounds, often with a history of neglect and abuse, often with alcohol or drug dependency problems, ie easy targets for men who often involved them In further drug dealings. The problem was that faced with younger and older children in such situations and very limited resources the choice was to prioritise the younger children and assume the older children knew what they were doing.