At the moment, the experience can only be called “mundane”. You take your child to the doctor for a rash or a sore throat, and the next thing you know your child is answering unrelated questions: “Is there a gun in your house?” Do you usually wear a seat belt when driving? What is your favorite music?”
If you have not yet heard such a dialogue between your child and the doctor, this does not mean that it is not happening. “Physicians are residentially trained to gently guide the parent out of the room so they can make an assessment,” reports pediatrician and ParentalRights.org board member Verlainna Callentine, MD, “The mindset is that because so many adolescents remain healthy, there is little opportunity to have a medical impact on the child once they are out of the early developmental years. When a child presents with a specific complaint, the opportunity is taken to assess other risk factors in the child’s life.
Dr. Callentine continues: “Absolutely, it can be intrusive. It’s intentional. Some doctors may not want parents to know the kinds of questions being asked for fear that the answers they will receive from the child will not be honest and truthful.
This line of questioning is called a “psychosocial assessment”. Many of these assessment tools are used in pediatric practices. One such tool is the HEEADSSS assessment, which has been around for years. HEEADSSS is an acronym for the myriad of topics the probe is meant to cover: Hcome, ETraining & Employment, Eeat and exercise, Aactivities and relationships with peers, Dcarpet/Cigarette/Drinking, Ssexuality, Ssuicide and depression, and Ssecurity. Some will also include spirituality, including questions such as “Is your family affiliated with a religious community?” and “How often do you go to church/synagogue/mosque/etc.?”
You won’t believe some of the questions doctors are asked to ask your child. Click here to see one of these questionnaires.
If government doctors used this, there would immediately be constitutional problems. Private physicians, however, are not restricted by the Constitution. Thus, although some physicians may, in some cases, maybe being held responsible for the privacy breach, the best defense is to be aware and prepared to avoid the problem altogether.
“Parents need to be educated and understand how to navigate the healthcare system with their child,” said Dr. Callentine. “They need to know that they have the right to say ‘no’ or to ask to be present during the discussion so that they can better associate with the health care provider. Parents are the advocates of their children. It is through a “healthy” partnership with their pediatrician that parents and children can be better served.
“We need to educate parents,” agrees Dr. Rosemary Stein, assistant professor at UNC-Chapel Hill Children’s Hospital.
According to Dr. Stein, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) established a committee several years ago to promote ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in the United States. This committee is very strongly connected to medical education programs across the country, using its influence to see that the international model – including HEEADSSS assessments – is presented as “the way to practice medicine” in the United States (Dr. Stein was a member of the AAP until his resignation due to philosophical differences).
The HEEADSSS assessment was first introduced by Americans GM Cohen and E. Goldenring in Contemporary Pediatrics in 1988. Obviously, then, it did not come from the United Nations. However, the implementation of HEEADSSS and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) may have striking parallels. It’s because both include the notable presumption that parents are agents to be watched rather than natural safeguards for the health and rights of their children.
This common premise facilitates the joint use of the CRC and the HEEADSSS assessment to interfere with parental rights around the world. The New South Wales (Australia) Center for Advancing Adolescent Health (NSW CAAH) has published a popular “Resource Kit” to help doctors learn how to administer these assessments. According to their website, the NSW CAAH “believes(s) that all young people have the right to comprehensive healthcare”, a slogan of international law signifying the “right” of adolescents to make health decisions – particularly in the areas of drug use and sexuality (including abortion) – without parental supervision, input or consent. It is no coincidence that this “right” is often claimed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, which systematically interprets Article 24 of the CRC to include this obligation.
The mindset is the same: parents are an obstacle that must be removed from the room to meet the needs of adolescents.
While it’s true that there are rare cases where this is indeed the case, capable parents have a fundamental right to direct their children’s care – and that includes the right to grant or deny a doctor’s consent to perform a “psychosocial assessment” of your child.
Unfortunately, the rise of electronic medical records and the drift towards government health care point to a day when the data collected through these assessments will end up in the hands of the government. And the push to ratify the CRC could usher in a day when the assessment will be seen as a legal necessity to fulfill the government’s obligation to ensure the best interests of every child.
For now, however, you have the right to say “No”. When the doctor asks you to leave the room to preserve your child’s privacy, you and your child together have all the legal powers to protect your family against this intrusion. Many states allow the doctor to honor your teen’s wishes rather than yours, but not to insert the doctor’s own wishes above those of you and your child together.
The proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution will ensure that this right of parents “to direct the upbringing, upbringing, and care of their child” will remain “a fundamental right.” This will prevent CRC ratification and stop government intrusion into your home and privacy. It will also ensure that no law is passed to take away your right to say to an intrusive doctor, “No”.
Help us educate parents
You can help us educate parents about this and other threats to their families in two main ways.
First of all, Forward this email to your friends and family who may not realize they are clients with rights when they take their child to the doctor. Encourage them to support the Parental Rights Amendment as a way to protect these rights.
Second, donate to ParentalRights.org today*. We are fully supported by concerned citizens like you. And if you can donate $100 or more, we will send you another tool to protect your children from intrusion, the complete Internet Security 101 DVD lessons. (Click on title for product details.)
Thank you for standing with us as we work to protect your family.
Sincerely,
Michael Ramey
Director of Communications and Research
*(Because we are a 501(c)4 lobbying organization, donations are not tax deductible – but we greatly appreciate your support!)
