{
  "abstract": "In the 40 years since the decision in Gillick,1 judges and clinicians have applied the notion of Gillick competence broadly. Can a person under 16 who is of sufficient maturity and intelligence to enable him or her to understand fully what is being proposed to them make a competent independent decision on their welfare, as opposed to a decision relating to their medical treatment? This potentially wide-ranging competency was illustrated by In re S,2 where a court was asked to determine the competence of S, a mother under 16 with learning difficulties. She had been delivered of her baby T by caesarean section under general anaesthesia and wished to have nothing to do with her baby. She learnt of T’s gender by accident and then wished to know T’s given name. S wished for T to be adopted as soon as possible, while herself being received into foster care. The local authority sought the court’s determination as to whether S was competent to consent to the placement of T for adoption. The test identified by the court was that set out by the House of Lords in Gillick, italicised above. It was agreed in S that to be satisfied that a child is able to make a Gillick-competent decision, the child should be of sufficient intelligence and maturity to ‘(i) understand the nature and implications of the decision and the process of implementing that decision; (ii) understand the implications of not pursuing the decision; (iii) retain the information long enough for the decision-making process to take place; (iv) weigh up the information and arrive at a decision; (v) communicate that decision.’ This recipe was achieved in part by the judge ‘importing’ elements of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 which was inapplicable to children under 16; but ‘materially…assisted…consistency of judicial approach to the determination of competence.’ The parties in S agreed that the judge, Cobb J, should apply the Gillick test for establishing the competence of a child parent to consent to the placement for and/or the adoption of their baby. In addition, the court noted that the determination of a child’s competence must be ‘…decision-specific and child-specific; it is necessary to consider the specific factual context when evaluating competence.’",
  "authors": [
    {
      "affiliations": [
        "Paediatric Surgery, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK"
      ],
      "name": "Robert Wheeler"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Is Gillick competence applicable only to medical decision-making",
  "uid": "3e34e18f-3b09-5be9-8340-139680046e3b"
}