Therapeutic Confidentiality and the Provision of Psychological ...

healthcare practitioners working with under 16's (DoH, 2000; Ford and
Kessel, 2001) 7 . Instead, the preferred policy focus will be on developing
age-appropriate psychiatric accommodation for young people, especially
for the seriously under-resourced 16-18 age group. This latter issue has
been correctly highlighted by successive Mental Health Act Commission
Reports as requiring urgent attention. The contradictions in wider
Government policy, however, remain unresolved on the contentious
issue of Gillick and young people's rights to confidential therapy. The
Government has a clearly stated public commitment to the 1989 UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child, with the appointment of a Minister
for Children in England. However it seems that, in the present dash to
construct an over-arching strategic reform of psychiatric care, a decisive
opportunity for introducing some joined up policy on the Gillick principle
is all too likely to be overlooked.
Northern Ireland Review of Mental Health Provision for Children and
Adolescents
In the specific context of the current review of mental healthcare
provision, there are a number of suggested developments which could
be considered, based on the model of children’s rights described above,
in terms of their rights respectively to welfare, participation and
independence. These suggestions could be linked to the detailed and
comprehensive survey of current provision in Northern Ireland
undertaken for the Children’s Law Centre (O’Rawe, 2003) 10 . The
following fairly modest proposals are all drawn from recent reviews or
reports on this issue in England and Wales, and are set out as potential
aims for the future service. (Specific sources are numbered, and appear
as a separate section in the references at the end of the article.)
Proposals for Northern Ireland Review of Mental Health Provision
for Children and Adolescents
Welfare:
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