Guardian consent for a minor
Handling consent for a patient under 18: the guardian who signs, the email confirmation loop, and what happens at their 18th birthday.
Around one in five Pippa users is under 18. For a minor, the parent or guardian is the contracting party, not the teen. This playbook covers how guardian consent flows through Pippa and what you, as the clinician, need to watch for. For the legal architecture behind it, see minors and consent.
There are two separate things at play: the app's own terms (which the guardian accepts for a minor) and your clinical consent waiver on the Consent tab. This page is about the guardian side; you still complete your own waiver as usual.
How the age gate works
Before any personal information is collected, the patient passes a neutral date-of-birth age gate in the app.
The account is blocked. Pippa does not create accounts for children under 13.
The parent or guardian becomes the contracting party. The guardian provides their email and accepts the agreement, and the teen gives their assent. This is the branch this playbook follows.
Standard self-consent. No guardian is involved.
The guardian email loop
When a minor's account is set up with a guardian, Pippa emails the guardian to confirm.
The consent record carries the minor's date of birth and the guardian's email.
A secure, time-limited confirmation link is sent to the guardian's email. The link expires after 30 days, and re-sends to the same address are throttled so the guardian is not flooded.
The guardian opens the link and confirms on a Pippa-hosted page. That records the guardian confirmation timestamp on the account.
Until the guardian confirms, the minor is not fully ratified. On the Consent tab, the Terms and guardianship panel shows who signed the app terms and whether the guardian has confirmed. If it is still pending, follow up so the record is complete.
What you see on the dashboard
Open the patient's Consent tab. The Terms and guardianship section shows:
- Whether the signer was the patient (self) or a guardian.
- Whether the account is flagged as a minor.
- The guardian confirmation timestamp, once the guardian has confirmed.
A guardian profile is not a clinical monitoring profile: mood, food logs, weights, and streaks are only active on the patient's own account.
The 18th-birthday ratification
A minor's consent was given by their guardian, not by them. When the patient turns 18, the app prompts them to ratify their own agreement, so the contract becomes theirs going forward. This happens automatically in the app on their birthday.
Consent and guardianship records are retained even after an account is deleted, as part of the long-term consent trail. If a family asks about deletion, see the data lifecycle; the audit record of who consented, and when, is kept.
Your part
- Complete your own clinical consent waiver on the Consent tab as you would for any patient.
- Check that the guardian has confirmed before you rely on the record.
- Keep your language age-appropriate with a teen patient, and remember the guardian is a party to their care.