Children's rights in psychiatry (0-14 years)

Your child will be assigned a contact from the department/section to which he/she is attached. We will issue a contact card with the contact’s name and telephone number.

Your contact will help provide continuity of treatment and will assist you and your child in getting answers to any questions.

At the Patient Office, you can obtain guidance and advice about your child’s rights as a patient. The Patient Office can also help you file a complaint if there are matters with which you are dissatisfied.

The Patient Office is independent of the Region in the specific guidance it gives you and your child as a patient. The Patient Office staff have a duty of confidentiality and will not contact hospital departments etc. without your consent.

If, during hospitalisation, your child is subjected to coercive interventions, a patient adviser will be assigned to your child.

Examples of coercive interventions are involuntary admission, deprivation of liberty or compulsory treatment to which neither the parent nor the child has consented.

The patient adviser must visit you and your child as soon as possible and always within 24 hours of the intervention, followed by visits at least once a week.

The patient adviser will advise you on everything to do with your child’s admission to hospital, your child’s stay in hospital and your child’s treatment. The adviser can also help you file a complaint if you need to.

An interpreter can be used if necessary in order for you and/or your child to understand the information you are given in connection with your child’s treatment.

The staff assess whether an interpreter is necessary and ensure that an interpreter is booked.

You will not have to pay for the provision of an interpreter.

As far as possible, we want to cooperate with the parents of patients who are minors. If you do not have joint parental custody, we will generally cooperate with the custodial parent. If consent is given, we will also cooperate with the person who does not have custody.

If you have parental custody of your child, you are entitled to receive information about your child’s state of health, illness and treatment options. You must also receive information about risks and possible side effects of the treatment and about the consequences if you do not wish your child to have treatment. You also have the right to obtain information about the outcome of the treatment.

If you are the custodial parent, you generally have a right of access to your child’s medical records. This means that you have the right to see the medical records and obtain a copy of them if needed.

In special cases, decisive considerations for the interests of the child or others may justify a limitation of the right of access to documents.  

It is not possible to view medical records of children aged under 15 at sundhed.dk as this requires a digital signature.

The medical records may be difficult to understand, as they are a tool for healthcare professionals. If you so wish, the staff can help explain the contents to you.

Medical records include information about:

• Diagnosis
• Course of the illness
• Results of examinations
• Correspondence with your GP, public authorities and possibly also with next-of-kin

If you are not the custodial parent, you have the right as parent to obtain information about your child’s condition on request. You may be informed orally or in writing, but you do not have a right of access to documents. There may be circumstances in which you can be refused information. If this happens, you can complain to the Danish Agency for Patient Complaints.

If your child is admitted, the staff must prepare a treatment plan within seven days. A provisional treatment plan is typically prepared within 24 hours. A provisional treatment plan is a plan with observational diagnoses or brief diagnostic considerations as well as examinations and treatment. A treatment plan must have been prepared within one week.

If possible, the staff will work with you concerning your treatment plan. You will be given a copy of the treatment plan, unless you do not want one.

If your child receives outpatient treatment – i.e. without being hospitalised – the staff will ensure that a treatment plan is prepared at the latest in connection with your second consultation.

If possible, the staff will work with you and your child concerning the treatment plan. You will be given a copy of the treatment plan, unless you do not want one.

Treatment plans are reassessed in the event of:

• Deviating examination results
• Significant change in your child’s condition
• Changes in the overall treatment strategy
• Changes in your child’s diagnosis
• Completed examination and diagnosis

For children and young people under the age of 15, the child’s guardian and the child must give informed consent to the child’s admission to hospital, stay in hospital and treatment. The staff will present all information about the child’s state of health and treatment options in a manner appropriate to the child’s age, maturity, experience etc.

The person in charge of your child’s treatment, for example your child’s doctor, must provide you and your child with in-depth information about your child’s illness and treatment. Information about the available treatment options will be presented in a manner appropriate to the child’s age and maturity. You and your child must also be given information about the possible consequences if you and your child choose not to commence treatment. This is what is meant by informed consent: you as a parent and your child must be provided with information before giving your consent.

Your consent can be withdrawn at any time.

As a custodial parent, you can renounce your right to make decisions concerning the use of coercive interventions.

However, there are exceptions and situations in which you and your child are not required to give informed consent:

• If your child is in a life-threatening situation requiring immediate treatment, and informed consent cannot be obtained from you and your child, your child will be treated without your consent.
• In certain circumstances, the Danish Psychiatric Care Act (Psykiatriloven) allows for treatment to be commenced without obtaining the informed consent of you and your child.
• The Psychiatric Care Act also allows use of other forms of coercion. Coercive interventions are interventions that you and your child have not consented to. However, coercion can only be used once everything possible has been done to obtain your and your child’s consent and always based on the principle of the least coercive care. This means that the staff will only use the coercion that is absolutely necessary for your child’s treatment. Coercive interventions include, for example, involuntary admission, compulsory detention or mechanical restraint.

Strict conditions apply to the use of coercive interventions, and patients who are subjected to coercion have special rights, for example quick access to complain and assignment of a patient adviser who will guide and assist the patient, for example in connection with complaints. See the previous ‘Patient adviser’ section on this page.

The staff are subject to a duty of confidentiality. As a general rule, they must not pass on information about your child’s health or other personal details without your consent. The duty of confidentiality also applies in relation to relatives.

In connection with your treatment, healthcare professionals may obtain electronic information about your child if necessary as part of the current treatment and disclose information to other healthcare professionals who are to continue the treatment. If your child is in a course of treatment and needs to be treated by several persons or at different places of treatment, the healthcare staff will disclose the relevant information. 

As custodial parent, you may request that staff refrain from obtaining and/or disclosing information about your child.

Read more about duty of confidentiality and disclosure and obtainment of information on sundhed.dk

You can complain to the Danish Agency for Patient Complaints if you think that health information has been wrongfully disclosed or obtained.

The general rule is that you and your child must make your own way to and from the hospital. Lack of access to public transport does not automatically entitle you to transportation and/or a travel allowance.

In special cases, you may be able to get help with your travel costs or be transported using Central Region Denmark’s taxi scheme or by ambulance if your state of health makes this necessary.

You can read more about the transportation and travel allowance conditions here.

In special cases, use of coercive interventions is necessary to keep the psychiatric patient or other persons safe. Coercive interventions include deprivation of liberty and compulsory treatment.

According to the Psychiatric Care Act, both parents and the child must give informed consent to the child’s admission to, stay and treatment in a psychiatric ward. In cases where parents and minors do not give their consent, any commencement of treatment will be categorised as coercive care.

Coercive interventions must not be used until every effort has been made to get you and your child to participate voluntarily.

Coercive interventions must be used as gently as possible, with the greatest possible regard for your child as a patient, so that he or she does not experience unnecessary humiliation or inconvenience.

Minors under the age of 15 who have not consented to treatment are covered by the procedural guarantees set out in the Psychiatric Care Act. Among other things, a minor is entitled to have a patient adviser appointed and has a right to complain. The patient adviser advises and assists with any complaints to the Patient Complaints Board and the courts.

In addition, both parents and the child must be offered follow-up consultation after the cessation of any form of coercion. The senior hospital physician in the department is also obliged to report any interventions against children under the age of 15, regardless of whether parental consent has been obtained for such interventions.

The rules on the use of coercive interventions in psychiatry are laid down in the Danish Psychiatric Care Act.

As parents of a child who is a patient, you are basically free to choose from any of the public hospitals throughout Denmark. However, a hospital department may refuse patients if that department has significantly longer waiting times than other similar departments.

What to do

If you would like to have your child attend another public hospital, you can contact the department to which your child has been referred. They will then make sure to send the referral to the hospital you have chosen.

Read more

At mitsygehusvalg.dk, you can see the waiting times in public hospitals and you can contact the Patient Office, if you need help.

Read more about the right to choose another public hospital.

Waiting times for treatment can be found on the Danish Health Authority’s website www.venteinfo.dk

If your child has to wait for more than 30 days for psychiatric examination and treatment, you are entitled to extended free choice of hospital. This means that you can choose to have your child examined or treated at the private hospitals with which the regions have an agreement. However, this only applies if the waiting time for the private treatment services is shorter than the waiting time in the psychiatric wards in Central Denmark Region.

Read more about free hospital choice on the Ministry of Health's website.

Waiting times for treatment can be found on the Danish Health Authority's website www.venteinfo.dk

As a patient, your child is entitled to be examined for what is wrong with him/her (receive a diagnosis) within 30 days if medically possible.

If it is not possible to make a diagnosis for your child within this deadline, you must be given an examination and diagnosis plan. The plan must include information on the time and place of the examinations the hospital expects will be needed to make a diagnosis for your child.

If your child cannot be examined and diagnosed in a hospital in your region of residence, you can choose to have your child attend a private hospital (extended free choice of hospital).

If errors have been made in connection with examination or care, or if your child has been exposed to a tangible risk of injury, this constitutes an unintentional incident.

You and your child can share the experience by using the website www.dpsd.dk. Here, you can enter your experience in a database of unintentional incidents. Your report will be sent to the department at the hospital where the incident occurred. The department will then investigate what they can do to prevent anything like that happening again. Please note that the department is under no obligation to reply to you.

If healthcare professionals, paramedics etc. are involved in an unintentional incident, they are obliged to report it. On the Danish Patient Safety Authority's website, you can read more about how reports of unintentional incidents are used to improve patient safety.

If there are matters that you are not satisfied with concerning your child’s treatment, you can initially contact the staff or the department management. You can also contact the Hospital Management in Psychiatry Central Denmark Region.

Read more at our website about how to complain.

www.naevneneshus.dk
Here you can find information about the Psychiatric Patients' Complaints Board.

www.patienterstatningen.dk
The Patient Compensation Association's website has information on the public compensation scheme for patients.

www.retsinformation.dk
On the website, you can search in all acts and regulations (executive orders, circulars etc.) issued by the ministries and the central state authorities as well as documents from the Danish Parliament (Folketinget).

www.sst.dk
The Danish Health Authority's website, where you can find information about duty of confidentiality etc.

www.stps.dk
The Danish Patient Safety Authority's website.

www.stpk.dk
The Danish Agency for Patient Complaints' website contains information on patient complaints, compensation and unintentional incidents.

www.sum.dk
The Ministry of Health's website contains information on patients' rights etc.

www.sundhed.dk
sundhed.dk is the national health service's online system.

You can also find other relevant information via the various associations for users and relatives.