GDPR & Children's medical records

[Imnobody4]

Hi - am new after lurking for ages. Just received e mail from Voice for Justice about letters recently received giving 13 yr olds authority on parents accessing medical records.

'Letters have recently, and unexpectedly, been falling onto the doormats of what appear at the moment to be selected households – first, a letter to parents, and, second, a letter to children between the ages of 13 and 16. Though differently worded both inform the recipient that after May 25th the legal age for consent to the sharing of information, here defined as medical information,will be 13. Which means that parents, without their child’s permission, would no longer be allowed access to their child’s medical records, including information about current and proposed medical procedures.And children over the age of 13 would be guaranteed complete secrecy, unless they gave permission for their parents to be informed.To put it bluntly, all medical information relating to children over the age of 13 would after May 25th be automatically withheld from parents, unless the child had given his or her explicit consent.'

It means for e.g. child could be prescribed puberty blockers without parent knowing!

Scrumples is absolutely right - 13 isn't a blanket "age of consent" under GDPR at all. It has been misapplied (as has a great deal of GDPR). The ICO have not helped things at all by releasing guidance late - and their final guidance on GDPR and children isn't even out yet and GDPR comes into force in less than a week. It's all a bit shit really.

I don’t know who Voice for Justice UK are

Looking at the Voice for Justice UK website, we see:
vfjuk.org.uk/parent-power-launched-in-parliament/

Jeffrey Donaldson MP from the far right Democratic Unionist Party (Save Ulster from Sodomy).
Donaldson in the past worked for arch racist Enoch Powell MP famous for his rivers of blood speech - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_of_Blood_speech
Donaldson’s campaign group Keep Marriage Special has controversially likened same-sex marriage to incest.

Tom Rogers is from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children who want to outlaw abortion from conception including cases of child-rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormality.

Next the age of sexual consent will be 13.

Surely this creates a catch 22. If all information can only be supplied to the parent with the agreement of the child yet parental permission is still required for a procedure, parents could end up signing for procedures they know nothing about?

Just another thought.

If children are asked to make this choice at 13,the vast majority will say their parents can still be involved and know about their medical information. Few will have the forsight to see a time when they might not want this and even fewer would want the aggravation of explaining their decision to parents due to a potential future issue (or indeed a current one)

Will this then give the impression to children that once they have agreed to their parents being involved , it cannot be revoked or that parents would need to be made aware of any attempts to remove permission. Thereby creating a situation where children may be even less likely to seek medical support for mental health, contraceptives etc etc because they will assume their parents can find out?