Guiding Principle 5: Consent. 

Consent is the mechanism by which we can honour difference and safeguard the autonomy and self-direction of ourselves and the people we are in relationship with.

Intentionally seeking and giving consent in our relationships means that ‘how we get along together’ will be supported by authentic information about each other, rather than being influenced by potentially misleading assumptions or expectations.

Seeking consent calls us to engage our curiosity about other people’s experiences, needs and boundaries and to respect their wishes and needs.

Giving consent means understanding our own autonomy and agency, and the freedom and boundaries that come with that; it means being able to say an authentic yes, no or maybe. 

What does ‘Consent’ mean to children and young people?

Consent is a term that, in our schools and culture, generally only starts to turn up for young people when adults want them to learn that they have bodily autonomy and can say “No” to physical relationships that are going too far. The right of a child to give or withhold consent is also considered in medical services, see Gillick Competence and Fraser Guidelines. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 includes those over 16, and gives them some rights about consent and about how decisions that affect them are made if they are shown to lack capacity to do so, by:

  • stating that it should be presumed that people have capacity to make decisions about themselves 
  • defining a test to establish if someone has the capacity to make a specific decision at the time the decision is needed.
  • describing how those involved in making decisions on behalf of people who lack capacity, should ensure that the decision is based on the person’s best interests.

Generally, our society and our laws see children as incapable of making decisions about things that affect them, that are in their own best interests. For many children this can apply even to everyday or highly personal things like what to wear, drink, eat, when to use the loo, who to play with, when to share their possessions, what to be interested in, how and when to move their bodies, what words to say, even down to what to look at and the expression they should wear on their faces.

We believe that the acts of intentionally seeking and giving consent about everyday things with all people, offer the foundations for empathy, learning where we end and someone else begins, creating our own healthy boundaries and honouring what we need to be happy and safe. It enables us to learn first hand about our own power, and about give and take, compromise and the consequences of our choices, without fear of shame, or judgement. 

Willingness to try things and step a little further from comfort, for many, is directly related to how safe and accompanied they feel, and how much they believe that they can later change their minds, and trust that that choice will be respected and free from judgement.

To us consensuality also means finding a place between us where we feel a proposal is ‘ok for now or safe enough to try’ and then accepting each other’s boundaries for the time being. It means maintaining curiosity when people change their minds and seeking the useful information which tends to exist behind people’s objections.

To be able to live consensually, we must experience three prerequisites.

  • Access to the information that is needed to make decisions that affect us (this may require having support to understand and weigh up information.)
  • Opportunity to make a fully informed decision (this may require having support to express a decision.)
  • The ability to make our decisions free from coercion*.

*This is complex and multifaceted. Consent and coercion are often tangled in many knotted threads of (for example) perceived expectations, fear of making ‘wrong’ choices, fear of consequences for ourselves or our loved ones, anxiety created by others who would control or choose for us about our future, lack of confidence in our own worth, ability, or sense to make a decision, love and concern for other people to the effect that their needs and wishes take higher priority than our own, etc. etc. Learning to find one’s own yes, no or maybe can require practice; that said, some young people we have the pleasure of working with, are already clear about their own truths, and are fluent in their expression – they are great guides to those of us whose truths may have laid deeply buried in the nexus of tangles from years’ of systemic control.