On Thursday, November 6, 2003, at 01:54 pm, Graham Hadfield wrote:
> It all depends on the age of the child doesn't it? If the child is old
> enough to understand the nature of the request and act for him/herself
> then
> the child should be making the application. Otherwise the application
> must
> come from a person who is legally able to act on his/her behalf -
> which I
> think would include the mother.
>
> In the case of any SAR it isn't up to the data controller to ascertain
> the
> reason why the applicant wants the data, that is their business.
>
That is of course right. But the Department of Health guidance on
access to social work and health records by a parent on behalf of a
child too young to understand or apply, is that the doctor etc is
entitled to deny access by the parent where access is not in the
child's best interests. I imagine the kind of situation they have in
mind is when the interests of the parent and child may be in conflict
eg in certain custody, mental health or child abuse cases.
There may be a distinction between "not in the child's best interests"
and "harmful to to child". I would have thought the latter was the
important thing. If the most you can say is that access may be helpful
to the parent but is neither helpful nor harmful to the child, then I
don't see why anyone should stand in the parent's way...
Maurice Frankel
Campaign for Freedom of Information
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