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This chapter examines three ethical issues. First, informed consent requires capacity, information, and voluntariness. Knowledge of state laws allowing mature minors to make their own decisions is critical for mental health care. Second, self-determination should involve some developmentally appropriate direct instruction in making good choices, setting realistic goals, and working toward them even if students must learn from their mistakes. A key issue is the identification of one's primary client. This is best assumed to be the student within school-based practice. Third, FERPA grants parents the right to inspect and review the vast majority of school records. FERPA also empowers parents to seek the correction of files they find false or misleading. Finally, there are only two relevant circumstances when school-based personnel can share information about a student on a nonconsensual basis — one involves sharing with those who have a legitimate educational interest and the other involves service-related research.

In August 2001, the Maryland Court of Appeals harshly criticized the Kennedy Krieger Institute of Johns Hopkins University for knowingly exposing poor children to lead-based paint. This chapter examines the court’s ruling that parents cannot consent to nontherapeutic research that poses any degree of risk to children subjects. It argues that the court was mistaken because parents legally can and morally should be allowed to consent to some nontherapeutic research. The research methodology to determine whether the research is approvable under the current federal regulations is also examined to refine what is meant by being ‘at risk’ for a ‘disorder or condition’.

The practice of adoption of children, and the terminology, existed in Scotland long before it was created as a legislative process. This chapter looks at the roots of adoption of children, in the benign informal adoption arrangements families and communities made, and in the malign money-driven practice of “baby-farming”. Demands for regulation grew after the First World War, and the Parliamentary debates on what became the Adoption of Children Act 1926 is covered in some detail. Thereafter the chapter explores all the legislative changes, bringing in forbidden degrees, damages for wrongful death and succession, this presented to show how adoption only gradually embraced the “full-transference of parenthood” model that it has today. The change throughout the 20^th century from an essentially private arrangement to the end-game of public law child protection processes is analysed in some detail, especially in relation to the court’s ability to dispense with parental consent. Finally, the motivations behind the sub-adoption order, known as the Permanence Order, created in 2007, is examined.

The marriage rites and accompanying official legislation related to marriage defined the nature and purpose of Christian marriage for Methodists. Yet, because of Methodism's gradual abandonment of its countercultural stance in favor of accommodating certain views and practices of American society, rites and legislation became significantly adjusted between the late eighteenth and the late twentieth century. During that time, restrictions against marriage with unbelievers or without parental consent were reformulated. Changing perceptions of marriage, the family, gender roles, and divorce were translated into the texts of rite and legislation. Wedding customs that blurred the churchly and the civil were sometimes embraced, but also challenged the Methodists to consider what makes a Christian wedding or a Christian marriage.

Unlike most European countries, at the beginning of the century English law did not have any procedure under which a child could legally be integrated into a new family. In the wake of World War I a restricted process was developed, but over the years many controversial questions had to be answered: should it be possible for a child to be adopted if a parent did not agree? And was it right to allow a child to be adopted by a step-parent, thus integrating him legally into a family but, equally, totally severing the legal relationship with the birth family? And should adoption be kept secret? At one time the case for preventing the birth parents from any possibility of interfering with the adopters’ relationships was thought to be of overriding importance, but more recently the desirability of allowing a child who has been adopted to find out the true facts about his or her origins has been recognised.

This chapter explores the shameful history of voluntary organisations and indeed the state exporting the problem of child protection by emigrating vulnerable children to the colonies. Many believed this would give the children a fresh start in a new life, but the lack of any regulatory mechanisms to prevent these children from being abused and exploited counters any good intent, for abuse and exploitation proved to be ubiquitous. The political objectives seldom had the interests of individual children in mind, and were more concerned first with removing a problem from Scotland, and latterly with building white stock in underpopulated parts of the British Empire. The chapter attempts to identify the – very shakey – legal foundations of the practice in the 19^th century, including parental consent and actings in loco parentis, before analysing the various statutory provisions from 1891 onwards that gave it some (legal) legitimacy. Statutory authority was removed only in 1997

The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 amends the grounds for dispending with parental consent to adoption, and this commentary identifies potential problems (subsequently explored in case law) with the new “welfare requires” ground. The commentary also explores the new invention in the 2007 Act, the “permanence order”, and its relationship to supervision requirements and other orders.

Reports on the proposals for adoption law reform contained in the Report of the Adoption Policy Review Group, chaired by Sheriff Principal Cox, and warns against the undue concentration on a single issue (allowing same-sex couples adoption rights) at the expense of the wealth of measures recommended which will have vastly more impact on the lives of children who might be adopted.

This chapter traces the process of who arranged marriages and how they were planned, with particular attention to the role of parents and kin, kings and lords, and initiatives of the couples themselves. In the period under discussion, marital arrangements were made by parents, kin, and lords with minimal input from the couple. In fact, the legality of marriage was subject to parental consent, not the couple’s. In the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries evidence emerged that suggests a development in thinking amongst the laity and clergy about what established a valid union. In narrative sources, such as chronicles, hagiography, and fiction, demands of young men and women for self-determination with respect to marriage were recorded. There seems to have been a gendered aspect to these emerging voices with more women than men, mostly from elite or well-to-do backgrounds, demanding a say in the choice of marriage partner.

This chapter focuses on two key areas which require further clarity and elaboration in the context of research with children, namely, the requirements for research which does not offer the child the prospect of a direct benefit and the provisions around child assent and parental consent. The chapter examines legal and ethical guidance regarding these issues, setting out areas of uncertainty and ambiguity between the various governing instruments. It argues that the lack of clarity in these areas needs to be addressed in order to provide a robust system of protection for children, parents and those involved in clinical research with children. It makes proposals for reform drawing on the legal, ethical and academic guidance in the area and best practice in other countries.

Three adoption cases are discussed: S v M 1999 SC 388 which discusses the “cannot be found” ground for dispensing with parental consent to adoption; J v Aberdeen City Council 1999 SC 405 which discussed the role in adoption of the man accepted as father but not registered as such; and Re B (A Minor) [1999] 2 AC 136 where the House of Lords permitted an adoption of a child just before her 18^th birthday in order to benefit her with British nationality.

Given the established success of newborn screening programmes around the world, promoters of personalized medicine envision the possibility of extending genetic analysis to bloodspots routinely collected for newborn screening. Since most of the diseases already screened for are genetic, diagnosis would be more precise. Moreover, data thus collected would merge into the creation of a repository of genetic information accessible in case of future health-related needs. The appeal of such a plan poses a series of ethical challenges related to the peculiar nature of genetic information, the involvement of babies, and the blurred boundaries of such an enterprise that extends beyond prevention, to clinical practice and research. After reviewing the key elements of the practice of newborn screening, and the increased use of genetic testing of babies, the paper analyses UK policies as a test case, considering the ethical implications of consent, solidarity and the conflict of interests involved. It is demonstrated that some forms of ‘genetic expansion’ of newborn screening amount to genetic research on minors and, consequently, must follow well-established protocols. Such screening may also violate the established legal principle that parental consent is based on the child’s best interests. Other forms of accumulation of data cannot even account for research, thus lacking scientific justification. Whether or not whole-genome screening of babies may be a promising scientific pathway, it should not threaten clinical standards of childcare in the guise of expanding a well-established public health initiative for children, without proper and agreed justification.