Describe how an intervention strategy can safeguard a client's right to informed consent

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Ensuring that clients understand and consent to an approach is essential to ethical and collaborative practice and is supportive of the principle of self-determination. The ability to give consent is informed by developmental stage, and cognitive and reasoning ability (Strom-Gottfried, 2008). In particular, informed consent presumes that clients (for verbal agreement) not only understand a proposed approach but also are able to weigh potential outcomes. A caveat for minors is that parents or legal guardians are presumed to act in the minor clients' best interest and therefore they (instead of the minors) consent to the intervention approach (Berman-Rossi & Rossi, 1990; Strom-Gottfried, 2008). Although minors are unable to give consent, they can nonetheless be provided with information about the approach and asked whether they assent; that is, they can give an "affirmative agreement" (Strom-Gottfried, 2008, p. 62). Also, as a means to involve minors, you can select appropriate questions to ask from the previous list. For example, do the minors have questions or reservations, are they concerned about the efficacy of the approach, and are they satisfied with how their progress will be monitored and measured??