Decisions about the Covid-19 vaccine have been causing great divides in even the most harmonious households. In the UK, parents have the power to decide whether their child should be vaccinated. When one parent doesn’t want their child to be vaccinated, but the other does, this can cause great tension between partners. Of course, the situation is further complicated where parents are separated.
The Covid-19 vaccine is now being offered to children aged 12-15 subject to parental consent, and it is anticipated that there will be a rise in applications to the court in cases where parents cannot come to an agreement about whether or not their child should be vaccinated. In this article, we take a look at what happens when one parent objects to having a child vaccinated and who makes the final decision.
Who has the power to make decisions about whether a child should be vaccinated?
In the UK, vaccinations are not compulsory which means that parents can decide whether their child should be vaccinated or not and parents do not have to agree in order for a child to be vaccinated. If a child is in care, the local authority will make the decision as to whether the child is to be vaccinated or not.
In cases involving children, the paramount concern is what is in the best interests of the child and scientific evidence has shown that vaccination is in most cases, in the best medical interests of the child unless there are specific anomalies in the case.
What happens when parents disagree about the Covid-19 vaccine?
The Green Book ( a document providing the latest information on vaccines and vaccination procedures, for vaccinations against preventable, infectious diseases in the UK) outlines what should happen where parents disagree. The document says:
“although consent of one person with parental responsibility for a child is usually sufficient, if one parent agrees to immunisation but the other disagrees, the immunisation should not be carried out unless both parents can agree to the immunisation or there is a specific court approval that the immunisation is in the best interests of the child”.
If you feel strongly about getting your child vaccinated but their other parent does not agree with you, you may be able to get a court order in favour of vaccination.
Getting a court order to vaccinate a child
If parents disagree about whether their child should be vaccinated, either of the child’s parents can make an application to the court under section 8 of the Children Act 1989 for a special issue order. The court will then make a decision as to how the dispute should be resolved.
Case example
Although the Covid-19 vaccine is relatively new and no decisions have yet been made about whether the vaccine will be made routinely available to healthy children under the age of 12, case law in relation to other vaccines can give us some indication of how such cases might be decided.
In the case F v F [2013] EWHC 2683 (Fam), parents disagreed about whether the two children they had together should have the MMR vaccine. In this case, the children were aged 11 and 15 and both objected to getting the vaccine. The parents in this case had both previously agreed not to vaccinate their children after reports that the vaccine could be connected to autism. However, this report was retracted at a later date and the father became concerned about his children’s welfare as they had not received the vaccine.
In this case, the Cafcass Officer raised concerns about the children’s objections, saying that the children could not fully appreciate all the risks and benefits of vaccination. As a result, they asked the court to be cautious when taking into account their wishes and feelings about having the vaccination. The court eventually decided that on balance, it was to the benefit of children to be vaccinated, and made a declaration in favour of vaccination.
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This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. Please note that the law may have changed since this article was published.
F v F - Acted for a German husband in a complex financial remedy matter. He decided to instruct IMD Solicitors after he had lost trust in his previously instructed solicitors and feared that he would not achieve a favourable outcome from the proceedings. The relevant assets were spread across the globe with some located in the UK (including a multi-million pound business), Gibraltar, Spain, Dubai, and Poland. The overall value of assets exceeded £24 million. The husband had been cut off from the matrimonial assets and excluded from control of the business that had been established by his family. The case involved the instruction of numerous experts, for business valuations, Capital Gains Tax reports, and opinions on the enforcement of orders in foreign jurisdictions, and dealing with several applications, including applications for orders to freeze assets, prevent the disposition of assets, for the joinder of parties, and to litigate conduct issues. The final result exceeded the client’s expectations.
L v L - We were instructed by a mother in a complex international children matter. She was required by orders of the UK courts to return the child to the UK from Poland. She had travelled with the child to Poland but, following unsuccessful application to extend her stay there in August 2017, she decided not to return to the UK because the child disclosed sexual abuse by a member of the paternal family and the father. In September 2018, the Polish court dismissed the father’s Hague Convention application for the child's return on the basis of Article 13(b), a decision which the father appealed. In March 2019, the father applied to the UK High Court for an order for the child’s return pursuant to the procedure set out in Article 11(6) – (8) of the Brussels IIA Regulation. Despite the father's unsuccessful Hague Convention application in Poland, the UK court ordered the return of the child. Article 11 does not allow the court of the returning country much discretion. After all of this, the mother instructed IMD Solicitors to apply to discharge the orders of the UK Court for the return of the child. Even in the face of the fact that most applications to discharge such return orders fail, we succeeded. We are currently awaiting a decision in the UK courts on a further application for the transfer of jurisdiction to the Polish courts where the mother resides with the child.
G v P - We represent a Spanish mother in respect of an urgent application for a Child Arrangements Order and Specific Issue Order in the UK seeking the relocation of the child to Spain. This was after the return of the child to the UK under Hague Convection proceedings which this mother lost in Spain.
She was asking for an order for the relocation of the child back to Spain and an urgent interim Child Arrangements Order to allow her to see the child pending the final outcome of the UK proceedings. IMD successfully argued that, regardless of the return of the child to the UK under the Hague Convention, the mother should be allowed unsupervised overnight contact with the child. We were delighted to be able to secure her contact with the child for Christmas and she said that it was the best Christmas gift she could have wished for. The outcome of the application for the relocation is pending.
S v V - We currently represent the father in Child Arrangements Order proceedings issued by the mother in relation to variation of a UK order made in the face of numerous other international proceedings. He is an Italian National who has been living in France for the last 20 years and the mother is a Lithuanian national. The child is now 11 years old and proceedings concerning the child have been ongoing in various jurisdictions for the majority of the child`s life. Contested divorce proceedings including child arrangements took place in Monaco. The French Court and authorities were also involved, and various proceedings had been ongoing between parties since 2013 in France and Monaco.
The parties’ divorce was pronounced in Monaco. Thereafter, in December 2020, the mother submitted an application to relocate to England with the child, and the relocation took place in June 2021. Upon relocation, the she lodged a child arrangement order application, seeking to register a judgment made in Monaco and to vary the same in respect of the contact arrangements between the father and the child. The father seeks for the child’s return to Monaco.
Due to the parties’ mutual allegations and the associated international elements, various authorities and courts that have been involved in the case, the local authority has become involved with the family and a guardian has been instructed to represent the child in the UK proceedings. At present, these proceedings in England are ongoing and the outcome of the professional reports regarding the family are awaited.
P v P - We have acted for the Respondent Husband in relation to the financial remedy proceedings in the UK. The parties had various assets in the UK and Romania consisting mainly of the portfolio of properties but conduct issues were raised by the Wife due to a business of the Husband over which she had lost control and her allegations of dissipation of assets. The value of assets excluding the business were in a region of £3 million.
K v K - We act in financial remedy proceedings for a wife who is a Polish national. The matter's complexity mainly comes from a dispute between the parties around land in Poland. Its value was initially in dispute but was then assessed by a joint expert to be in the region of half a million pounds. The total assets in this case are estimated to be worth over £1 million. The land in Poland is a subject to contract with a third party and is being leased as a photovoltaic (solar) farm. The division of the land to achieve an equal share of the assets is complicated due to the contract in place and plans for the future use of the land. Currently the parties are awaiting a final hearing but efforts are being made to reach a settlement with the aid of alternative dispute resolution and in order to save the parties money and avoid further delays.
R v O - We acted pro bono and worked together with a law firm in Poland to ensure that the Costa Rican Mother regains access to her child. The Mother's only child was abducted from the UK in 2014. The Mother was successful with the abduction case and the UK family courts ordered the return of the child. The orders were recognised in Poland but unfortunately due to various issues with the Mother's immigration status and court's delays in Poland, the orders were never enforced. The Mother was facing removal from the UK and prospects of never seeing her child again. We have corresponded with various courts in Poland dealing with international abduction matters and we decided that an application for contact should be issued rather than any proceedings for further enforcement of the orders, as the Mother had not seen the child for around 7 years. At the same we secured the Mother's stay in the UK making successful outside of immigration rules application to extend her stay. We now receive regular photos from the Mother with her daughter, as face to face contact is taking place. We helped to secure an order of the Polish courts for the Mother to see the child regularly in person, whilst when she instructed us she was facing a prospect of never seeing her child again and being deported to Costa Rica.
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