A variety of standards is applied, not always uniformly throughout the UK, to matters as diverse as when a young person may consent to sex, marry, accept criminal liability, buy cigarettes and alcohol, vote, drive a car and give or withhold consent to medical treatment. Usually, although this is not the case with medical consent, the law settles these questions with a line in the sand. Age is the determining factor. This ignores the fact that children have a wide range of normal development patterns, but it makes social policy manageable. There can also be conflict between the law and belief systems, usually but not invariably religions, which play a large role in directing the lives of many young people.

Young people have full human rights long before they have the maturity to use them. The boundary between the parents’ caring role and the child’s legitimate impulse towards independence can be difficult to define at any particular time. These matters occasionally intrude into healthcare. Consent to medical treatment and confidentiality are the subjects which cause difficulty. Minor injury is not a field where problems of this kind arise very often but it does happen from time to time. You must have a sense of how our multicultural society in general, and the law in particular, approach these matters. The child’s immaturity imposes on you a greater burden, not a lesser one, to protect his or her rights; but you must also ensure that your patient has been properly treated. While your first obligation is always to the patient, the best solution to any problem is one which is acceptable to the whole family.