Consent and Confidentiality with Children and Young People

This consent and confidentiality training for children's care explains how to make lawful, confident decisions when the patient is under 18. It is written for doctors, nurses, midwives, health visitors, pharmacy and dental professionals, allied health professionals, optometrists, paramedics and any other UK registrant who sees children and young people, whether daily in paediatrics or occasionally in a pharmacy, dental surgery or emergency department.

Children's consent is one of the areas professionals most often feel unsure about. Can a 14-year-old consent to contraception without her parents knowing? What happens when a competent 16-year-old refuses treatment? Can a grandmother who brings a child to an appointment give consent? When must a young person's confidence be broken to protect them? The course works through these questions, explaining the law in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and the professional guidance that sits alongside it.

It is designed to take approximately 2 hours, including reading, reflection points, a written reflective account and a 15-question assessment, and is fully self-paced. You buy and take it on our course portal; see the course catalogue for related titles. Healthcare Practise UK is an independent provider. We are not affiliated with any UK regulator or the NHS, and no regulator has reviewed this course.

Children's law is devolved, and the course is careful to say where the rules differ.

The course also explains the mandatory duty to report known FGM in under-18s in England and Wales, and the new duty to report child sexual abuse created in England by the Crime and Policing Act 2026. Your regulator's current standards and your nation's law always take precedence.

• The legal and ethical landscape. Why children and young people are different, the key legislation in each nation, children's rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the professional guidance you are expected to follow.
• Parental responsibility. Who has it in common family situations, how it is exercised when parents disagree, looked-after children, foster and kinship carers, and how to check and record authority at first contact.
• Competence and consent. Young people aged 16 and 17, assessing the competence of a child under 16 for a specific decision, the Fraser guidelines in sexual and reproductive health, refusal of treatment, and emergencies and applications to court.
• Confidentiality. The duty of confidence to young people, encouraging (not pressuring) them to involve their parents, disclosure in the public interest and to protect, and data protection and record keeping.
• Safeguarding and information sharing. Recognising abuse, neglect and exploitation, the safeguarding frameworks in each nation, sexual activity and the age of consent, FGM and child sexual abuse reporting duties, and the principles of good information sharing.
• Special situations. Young people's mental health and informal admission, young people with learning disabilities and additional needs, transition to adult services, and digital, remote and multi-agency care.

The scenarios are the ones that come up in practice: a mother phoning to ask whether her 15-year-old has seen the GP about his mood, a 16-year-old consenting alone to a procedure, a grandmother bringing a child for a dental check, and a 14-year-old asking a sexual health nurse for contraception.

Reflection points and "apply it" tasks appear in every module. At the end you write a short reflective account to three prompts: what you have learned about assessing competence and parental responsibility; how you would now handle an anonymised situation involving a young person's confidentiality; and what you will change in how you explain confidentiality, record consent or share safeguarding concerns, and how you will check the change is working. Your reflection is saved on your own device only.

The assessment has 15 scenario-based questions with a pass mark of 12 (80%). If you score below 12, you review the linked sections and try again. Passing earns a certificate of completion from Healthcare Practise UK.

For CPD, record the time you actually spend, which may be more or less than the two-hour estimate. Nurses, midwives and nursing associates should note that self-directed online learning usually counts towards the NMC's individual CPD hours rather than its participatory hours, unless you complete it with colleagues. Doctors reflect on CPD at appraisal; the GMC does not set a fixed number of hours. The HCPC, GDC, GPhC, GOC, GOsC and GCC each set their own CPD rules, so check what applies to you, and keep your certificate and reflection together.

The course is a good fit if you have moved into a role with more contact with young people, such as school nursing, community pharmacy, sexual health or general practice, or if a recent case left you unsure whether you got consent or information sharing right. It also supports appraisal and revalidation reflection, because most registrants can describe at least one real, anonymised situation to reflect on.

For teams, it gives everyone a shared language for competence, parental responsibility and safeguarding referrals. Practices and services can assign it through our team credits. It supports awareness, but it does not replace the safeguarding children training your employer requires at your level, so check local requirements. Our separate safeguarding children training covers recognition and referral in more depth.

The general principles of confidentiality are covered in our confidentiality training, and adult capacity in the Mental Capacity Act training, which matters from age 16. For mental health crises in young people and adults, see the Mental Health Act essentials course. These and other titles are grouped in our clinical ethics and law courses, and the course finder can suggest a starting point.