Gillick competence is about understanding, not age
Dr Helen Webberley on GB News: puberty blockers, with Lucy Johnston, GBNews
Children are too young to consent to medical treatment involving puberty blockers. Surely there has to be an age limit, and surely a decision this significant has to be made by adults on a child's behalf.
What I was pointing to there is that the law already answered this question, and it did not answer it with a number. Gillick competence is about whether a child can understand the information they are being given and make a decision about that stage of their care. Age is not the test; understanding is. And the other thing I want people to grasp is that this is not a single, irreversible moment. A puberty-blocking injection lasts three months. Then we ask again. Then the child decides again. Medical consent in this context is not a door you walk through once and cannot come back from; it is a conversation that keeps happening, with the child at the centre of it every time.
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