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02 November 2005

To: All Persons Responsible & all HFEA Inspectors

Dear Colleague

New guidance on Welfare of the Child assessments

On 3 November, the HFEA will announce the outcome of its review of guidance to licensed centres on taking into account the welfare of the child. The new guidance (at annex A) replaces Part 3 of the Code of Practice 6th edition. Some sections of the previous guidance remain, but will be moved to a different section of the Code when the 7th edition is published. These are at Annex B. Amendments have also been made to Part 5, the Information section of the Code, and can be found at Annex C.

The new guidance differs from the previous guidance in the following ways:

• There should be a presumption to provide treatment, unless there is evidence that the child to be born, or any existing child of the family, is likely to suffer serious medical, physical or psychological harm.
• The factors clinics should consider now focus upon risk of serious medical, physical or psychological harm to the child.
• Medical and social information will now be collected from the patient themselves, with follow-up to GPs or other agencies only when clinics judge there to be a risk of serious harm.
• Donor conception patients should undergo the same assessment process as other patients, but should be provided with information about the implications of treatment. Clinics should encourage and prepare such patients to be open with their children from an early age about the circumstances of their conception.

The new guidance should be implemented in centres by 1 January 2006, though implementation can occur sooner, if centres have updated their protocols. A patient history form, designed to gather information relating to the risk factors in the new guidance, will be available in the next mailing to centres. However, centres are not obliged to use this form. A new patient leaflet will also be available before the implementation deadline, providing information to patients on the new welfare of the child assessment process. The effectiveness of the new guidance will be monitored through inspection.

If you have any questions or require further information, please contact your Inspector or Juliet Tizzard, Policy Manager, on 020 7291 8232 or at Juliet.Tizzard@hfea.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely

Suzi Leather
Chair

• Revised Guidance (51.16 Kb)

Page last updated: 23 August 2012

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