Recently a parent contacted COCAAR regarding the difficulty they were having in accessing their child’s medical records. We believe that this is a case worth taking further and we intend to assist in their taking of a case to the Human Rights Tribunal.

Background

The parent concerned, unfortunately like many, has had a difficult time trying to maintain care and contact with their child. They have been through the Family Court mill for over a decade. Although they have always been granted care and contact by the court they have been subjected to the normal withholding of information and petty constraints by the other parent. Like many who find themselves in this situation it gets to the point where the toll of having to scrap for every piece of normality with regard to seeing and caring for their child becomes too much.

However there are some issues, particularly those concerning the health of a child, where a parent can no longer turn a blind eye or the other other cheek. The parent has had to use many channels to get round the lack of information sharing. One such channel has been to on a regular basis request the full medical records of their child from their child’s General Practitioner (GP).

This was done a few months ago and to the parent’s shock they discovered the child had a significant illness and was being treated by a number of different agency’s. The parent immediately followed up with the GP asking a number of questions. They also contacted directly the other agencies. Of course they contacted the other parent knowing full well that information from that source would not be forthcoming. However once that parent was contacted the other agencies were contacted and told to not release anymore information.

The child who was aged 13 at the time had, supposedly on their own initiative, told the GP and each of the agencies that they did not want the details shared. As per the Privacy Act, the Privacy Commission Rules and the Health Information sharing legislation each of the agencies chose not to release the information.

The parent felt immediately disenfranchised from their key parenting and moral responsibilities and filed four separate complaints with the Privacy Commissioner. Each complaint failed on the same grounds (more detail to follow soon).

Further Legal Action

We have been informed that the parent is now taking a complaint to the Human Rights Commission seeking the overturning of the Privacy Commission ruling(s). The basis of their argument is that it is in the best interests of the child that each parent has full access to their underage child’s medical records. It is not conducive to healthy outcomes for the child when parents are excluded from their normal parenting roles particularly when there is no evidence of parental harm.

COCAAR intends to fully support this parent in this action.

TO BE CONTINUED….