Restoring balance to “best interests” disputes in children

Personally, setting aside a lot of dubious assertion on social media about things such as 'state control' and 'euthanasia', I think this case made it very clear that the legal situation for arriving at decisions in this type of situation - 'best interests' - is not a description of 'a process of shared decision-making'.

The process requires multi-party discussion, and the hope is always that an agreed-by-all and 'good' decision is arrived at: not 'shared decision-making' to my mind, but informed discussion with at its end the same decision being arrived at by all of the involved parties. When the process does not end in agreement, an appeal for a court ruling removes any suggestion that the decision-making is 'shared' because it becomes the judge's decision: a single decision-maker, who must therefore agree with his or her own decision.

My point: I feel sure I will be reading suggestions about how to improve 'shared decision-making', but in the end we will still need recourse to something which decides when different positions are held by families and clinical teams.

And I think, in our social-media age when parents have realised the power of 'getting our story out there', that there will need to be a change to address this problem the authors pointed at:

'Another possible solution would be to allow (or require) medical professionals to make public the evidence on which they are basing their decisions. That would enormously increase transparency, and help ensure that any wider discussion is based on relevant and verifiable facts. It would, however, breach the child’s confidentiality.'