Consent and ethics: children and young people

Published: 13/08/2019

Educational resources

Additional learning resources are summarised below. You may also find it useful to refer to the resources on our key references and links page:

Virtual cases (Powerpoints)

Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) Ethics and Law Pages

Paediatricians and other clinicians often have to take very difficult decisions while acting in strict accordance with the law and with sensitivity towards the customs and beliefs practiced by their patients and their patients' families. Read more...>

Royal College of Surgeons of England

RCS England free e-Learning resource on Duty of Candour. Read more...>

e-Learning for Health – Healthy Child Programme

The Adolescent Health Programme (AHP) is an e-learning programme for all healthcare professionals working with young people. Read more...>

The Mind Ed Portal

Offers free peer reviewed material for all professionals who do not necessarily have expertise in Mental Health. Read more...>

Disability Matters

A jointly developed free resource by the RCPCH and British Council for Disabled Children containing various modules including Consent, Best interests and End of Life Care decision making. Read more...>

Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)

A range of guidance covering consent, confidentiality, duty of candour as well as general good practice especially relevant to the vulnerable young people and adults with a disability, e.g. Mental Capacity Act (2005) at a glance. Read more...>

Ethics-themed edition of Pediatric Anaesthesia

Pediatric Anaesthesia published a themed ethics edition in 2009 which is free to access without a subscription. It contains 16 ethics-related articles relevant to anaesthetists on topics such as consent (specifically for regional anaesthesia and who should obtain consent for MRI under GA), the child who refuses a GA, research, religion and high risk surgery. Read more...>

Radio 4 podcasts: Inside the ethics committee

In each episode a panel discusses an anonymised but real case that presented moral dilemmas for the patient, family and healthcare team involved. A large number of programmes from the archive are available as podcasts, many of which involve the care of children. Each episode is 43 minutes long. Read more...>

British Medical Association (BMA)

Children and young people ethics toolkit 2010 – a very useful series of guidance cards covering many areas including competence, consent, parental responsibility, best interests, refusal, restraint and research. Read more...>

Me first

Provides a model for communication to improve understanding between healthcare professionals and children and young people. They have a simple informative website and also run regular courses. Read more...>

The anaesthetist, restrictive interventions and restraint teams by Dr L Brennan