Vaccinating children and the enduring resistance to Gillick competence: overcoming barriers to consent through a children’s rights-based approach

It has been 40 years since the landmark ruling in Gillick. This dispensed with the need for parental consent to provide advice and treatment to children deemed to have sufficient maturity and understanding to consent on their own behalf. While this remains a cornerstone of decision-making in the context of healthcare, it has yet to permeate policies and processes relating to childhood vaccination. Vaccination of children is a critical and highly effective public health measure to combat HPV and other serious diseases associated with the virus, and yet evidence shows a progressive decline in take-up rates. Drawing on the views and experiences of over 100 vaccination nurses and managers, this article provides unique
empirical insights into the barriers to gaining consent for HPV vaccination. The findings reveal that parental consent is generally treated as the sole criteria by which to determine whether a child can be vaccinated, even where a child is deemed by them to be Gillick-competent. The findings indicate how more robust and confident application of the law, in line with the UK’s children’s rights legal obligations, would significantly enhance protections for all children and achieve considerable and much-needed savings to vaccination programmes.