Children’s competence is the fundamental axis around which their legal rights revolve. It is crucial in areas such as medical consent, sexual exploitation and criminal culpability to understand whether children’s views and choices are ‘their own’. Yet there is little agreement on how (or even whether) to measure or understand competence, though it is often cited in various areas of law and practice. Children’s rights are therefore in danger of losing meaning as competence is not understood; and adult/child power dynamics insufficiently recognised. Children’s lawyers, judges, doctors and other practitioners make decisions as to children’s ‘competence’ seemingly in a knowledge vacuum, as theory and evidence appear only to exist in developmental psychology; a discipline which is contested, overly-clinical, and largely impenetrable to outsiders. This study will critique developmental psychology approaches to children’s competence in light of scholarship from childhood, disability and feminist theory; in order to enhance understanding of how children’s competence should be approached in a way which gives full acknowledgement to the importance of context (information, power etc.).

Through theoretical work, case law analysis and interviews with practitioners, the research will consider competence (both general theory and formal practitioner assessments) in light of the complex interactions between neurobiology, social/ familial ties, and practitioner knowledge of developmental psychology; as well as the power structures of institutions such as courts and hospitals. In this way we can uncover how factors may converge to marginalise and even dehumanise the legal child subject in the competence assessment. The project has transformative potential to broaden the traditional confines of approaches to competence; and facilitate an evidence and rights-based theory of ‘children’s competence and context’ to provide an alternative approach for practitioners and for the legal arena. The research will progress the aims of the ISRF by advancing interdisciplinary work in a distinctly under-researched area.