Social work and trans identifying teens

If you want to challenge this OP, I don't think it's batshit to assert that some girls in particular might want to leave their female body and identity behind as a way of escaping memories of abuse, particularly if they're prone to self-harm and they're already pretty gender non-conforming.

You are right to be concerned. Increasing numbers of social workers and other professionals are beginning to organise against the absence of safeguarding around practice being advocated on gender identity. There is no such thing as a transgender child. Only a child who has been misinformed and their transitioned affirmed by adults. The Evidence Based Social Work Alliance has held several webinars on the issues. We are getting our website organised. Genspect and Gender A Wider Lens are both great sources of advice as is Transgender Trend.

EBSW do have a website but it does not seem to be available atm.

I don't know why.

To be honest, I'm not so sure. Whereas "it's not guaranteed and nobody should be expecting women to sacrifice their careers and financial futures for the grand gestures" I think there is a fine line between this and throwing one's sense of ethical responsibility out of the window to climb the greasy pole (especially for those established and respected). I'm disappointed there has not been more collective action. To be honest, I'm not sure how some sleep at night.

Ok I take issue with this.

It's not a zero sum game.

We actually want/need GC SW's to "climb the greasy pole" and be elevated to positions of influence.

That also does not have to mean throwing away your ethical responsibility. Rather we want SW's working with vulnerable children in an evidenced based way on a case by case basis rather than making grand gestures that ultimately only serves to dilute the GC mass of the profession.

To cite Meade again - many SW's are watching and waiting. If she wins then this does present greater opportunities to challenge gender ideology within SWE and LA's.

Throwing yourself under a bus before that outcome is known serves very little purpose.

I’m a therapist in mental health for the NHS and it’s very captured, and I worry about the training that’s being given in the NHS too around this area. I feel a bit helpless with it all. I can say from my experience at work that everyone I have worked with who is trans identifying almost always has some trauma preceding the gender dysphoria and there’s a clear link. But I’d have to address this very carefully to avoid being accused of “conversion therapy” and it gives me anxiety.

Was a social worker for many years, and looking back I cannot believe that I was let loose at a pretty young age, without life experience or even social work education that concentrated on evidence based practice. We should have had much more about dealing with abusive situations…but in those days CSA was being uncovered and we were unprepared .
These days I would not be able to manage to keep my mouth shut when dealing with these propagandarists in training sessions. It is with age and experience, and the knowledge that we don’t have to continue in the job that we can speak out. Except of course we need our job and will get no protection as Rachel Meade found out. I know so many otherwise concerned and sensible Social workers who have gone woke , that I fear for the future of the profession.

To be honest, I'm not so sure. Whereas "it's not guaranteed and nobody should be expecting women to sacrifice their careers and financial futures for the grand gestures" I think there is a fine line between this and throwing one's sense of ethical responsibility out of the window to climb the greasy pole (especially for those established and respected). I'm disappointed there has not been more collective action. To be honest, I'm not sure how some sleep at night.

Yes, this
I'm a gender critical social worker and there are honestly loads of us. There are also even more social workers who are completely out of the gender discussion but are thoughtful, critical and evidence based when working with trans ID teens.
yes the training is awful. We have a LGBT awareness training that I'm refusing to do (I'm a manager so can get away with just avoiding it) but it's provided by allsorts among others and I just know how awful it will be. However I can do more by modelling questioning, careful and quietly gender critical practice than I can by making a fuss about training.

Well said NQSW. While it's a compelling argument that we should all be shouting this from the rooftops, the landscape of sacked and bullied women shouldn't be ignored. As Social Work England & the LA have come out of the Rachel Meade case looking appalling, it's hopeful that she'll win. But it's not guaranteed and nobody should be expecting women to sacrifice their careers and financial futures for the grand gestures. Good luck in your new post.

I appreciate what you are saying and certainly in my home life and at Uni I was happy to speak out. I've lost friends over this issue and frankly I've lost no sleep over that.

Yet I think you also need to appreciate the fact that "you need to be in it to win it".

Go in all guns blazing as an ASYE isn't going to change the profession. It's a path to blowing nearly £20k worth of MA fees and one less GC SW.

Sometimes we need to be careful and establish out place in the pecking order before pushing for change.

That doesn't mean "playing ball" with gender ideology or doing nothing. It's about being circumspect and realistic about what you are in a position to change and picking battle's carefully.

I've already mentioned Rachel Meade and the outcome of her tribunal could be a game changer for the profession if she wins.

As is, we are still in a situation where SW's fear being sanctioned by SWE and fired by their LA for expressing GC views on a private FB account, never mind actively campaigning/calling for change within the workplace.

Yet what we can do is keep chipping away. Making connections with other like minded SW's. Raising concerns using evidence based practice when dealing with relevant cases. Being professional and putting the best interests of the people we work with first and foremost.

I have a different perspective on this. I think that when we hear that voice inside telling us to act, if we instead talk ourselves out of it, a bit of our vitality dies. And slowly this is how we become tired and small.

Yes, it is HARD to speak up. I have been there. You might lose some friends. But my experience was I also found out who the other like-minded ones were, and together we now have the beginnings of a tribe to navigate this with.

Leap and the net will appear.

Jordan Peterson "speak or wither away" on youtube might be interesting for you.

Hi All,

I'm another mature NQSW (due to start my first role in November).

My MA experience (RG Uni) was that lecturers were all fully paid up TRA's. Rainbow lanyards, pronouns on emails and waxing lyrical the "most oppressed" narrative and "expert in their own lives" at every opportunity.

As another posters mentioned, most haven't been practicing SW's in over a decade.

LGBTQ+ training was outsourced and pretty much what you would expect - it was like playing bingo, right down to to citing "Stonewall law" re: the "Equalities" Act (always a dead giveaway, no its the bloody Equality Act and gender identity being a protected characteristic, no it is not).

The positive news is that the vast majority of students simply didn't buy it. It's not a good look if you can't cite relevant legislation correctly to a group of post grads and leads to questioning the rest of your claims.

However, as the OP experienced they (and the lecturers) closed down any questioning pretty damn quickly - something that was in so much contrast to other subjects it was a red flag in itself and very much noted.

I'd say on my course all the mature students were GC and even the majority of students who came straight from undergrad studies had concerns about TRA demands in relation to safeguarding/conflicts with women's rights. Though we did have a couple of fervent NB's on the course (who if anything served only to peak people rather than the reverse).

On placement the SW's I was close to were all GC and following Rachel Meade's situation very closely.

As to my new role, well we will have to see. Being on probation doesn't lend itself well to sticking your head over the parapet so the plan is very much to get through ASYE first before making waves - though based on a few comments I suspect my manager is GC - but l will be treading carefully until I know for sure.

I’m a NQSW but long in the tooth - 20 years prior experience with children in care. I’m working with teens and I think around 10%, probably more, of the total number my team work with identify as trans.

I tried to speak to my manager very cautiously about this, just testing the waters, about affirmation being potentially harmful. I mentioned the Cass Review and detransitioners. Manager has been in SW at least 20 years, v experienced, basically shut me down - we don’t question their identity. Since then I’ve seen the local authority policy - it’s fully affirming and anyone can use whatever toilet they want etc.

I’ll be emailing sex matters for advice when I get some time.

One colleague was talking about ‘educating’ a teen’s relative about accepting their gender identity.

This (ideology) did not come up at all on my MA. (Thank god!) - my course was excellent and very focused on encouraging critical thinking and being responsible for our own professional integrity.

I’m on probation period so not able to be fully outspoken about my GC beliefs but am gently questioning and hopefully sowing seeds. I’m only just picking up one trans identified teen on my case load so I’ll see where that takes me.

@concernsocialworkstudent I’ve emailed EBSwA a few times but haven’t had a response to my last email a couple of months ago. GETA are very helpful and the Gender A Wider Lens podcast is excellent.

Ive started a blog too, to try and put all the info I’ve learned into one place in bite size articles. Each one takes me so long though so there’s not much on there yet.

I’d love feedback from any of you fellow social workers, and anyone really!

https://gendercriticalsocialworker.substack.com/

Sounds like some training I had as a teacher. They wouldn't even counter if, just shut it down.

SW training is basically just get through whatever the lecturers are uncritically presenting and learn to do the job on the job. Most of them haven’t been in practice in years/decades (sometimes not at all), and what they mean by critical thinking is not what the rest of the world means by it. I learnt this the hard way…

I think the reference is to an interview with Kirsty Entwistle about her work at GIDS in Time to Think? I haven't followed the footnote but will do

Quote here

"The work felt ‘unethical’ to Entwistle. She says she wasn’t the only one who felt this way either. The young people presenting to the service had such complicated backgrounds that it was ‘impossible’ to carry out an adequate assessment in this time. ‘Even though as a new starter I was meant to be taking on low- to medium-complexity cases I would say that the vast majority of children on my caseload had had traumatic experiences.’12 Entwistle’s caseload included children with parents who’d been long-term psychiatric patients, families where the mother had accused the father of rape, a number of children who had only ‘minimal verbal communication skills’, and ‘many’ who had witnessed domestic violence. Three per cent were families where a parent was a registered sex offender. ‘That seems above average,’ she reasons. ‘So that needs to be audited. Does everybody have… sex-offending parents on their caseload?’13

To put that figure into some context, in 2018 there were 58,637 registered sex offenders in England and Wales, the vast majority of whom are male.14 The total male population aged 18 to 65 was more than 18 million.15 That gives a male adult offending rate of 0.3 per cent – less than ten times that seen in this snapshot of GIDS families. It’s not a perfect comparison by any means, but one would not expect to see this rate in Entwistle’s caseload. The reaction in the GIDS Leeds team to Entwistle’s letter is interesting. ‘At first I thought, “Wow, that’s brave. Credit to her,”’ one former colleague told me, before explaining a sudden..."

Not sure if anyone came back to this with a source but it is in Hannah Barnes' book, Time to Think. Chapter 15. She compares the number of children on a particular clinician's caseload who have a registered sex offender as a parent with an estimation of the rate of sex offenders as a whole. The stat is legit although as with all stats, will have it's limitations.

She released that what was it 4 years ago?

Lessons are never learnt. Look how quickly they have crumbled under this ideology.

@AlisonDonut this is such an important video.

I despair that the lessons from history (recent and past) are being ignored and dismissed (deliberately) with the smoke screen of inclusivity.

Those championing certain groups and targeting those with CG views are either very naive or very dangerous. Or both.

You might want to watch some videos by Lisa Muggeridge, especially the social work one...

I had to attend a similar session at work - when asked about side effects of puberty blockers the response was 'all drugs have side effects'. None of the 15 medically trained doctors I was sat with raised any concerns. People are scared to speak.

I've recently listened to the audiobook of "Time to Think" and it talks a lot about this kind of thing.

One thing that struck me about it was near the end, there were some comments from a man who wasn't particularly critical of GIDS but out of his own cases (100+) he had only referred a couple for blockers. He seemed a bit incurious about whether other clinicians were being as cautious as he was. But what I found interesting was that somehow he hadn't felt the pressure to be more affirmative.

I don't know if it is that female clinicians are more likely to be/feel pressured into going along with the affirmation = kindness narrative, whether he happened to be trained by one of the more sensible cautious senior clinicians, whether his patients /their parents would question his judgement less (so he wasn't over ridden by patients switching to someone who would given them blockers) or whether he was just quite insular. He also hadn't worked there for as long so maybe he would have started to question whether other clinicians were referring young people that he wasn't, or started to see things weren't changing for the better and become more critical over time.

I was just wondering whether there are ways to work ethically within a captured framework or whether it was only possible at GIDS Tavistock because there was so much variation and it wasn't standardised. They seemed to just do their own thing for better or worse.

You may also be aware that the group representing children of transpeople (Cots) have also got a website. They have raised concerns children are not always protected from harm by social workers where offending parents say they are trans.
https://childrenoftransitioners.org/2021/09/25/not-shutting-up/
There is also info on the EBSWA website of how conversion therapy bans for transpeople may interfere with social workers trying to protect CoT children (eg challenging dads wearing fetish clothing showing male genitalia or watching porn in front of CoT children) and Cots have raised concerns that sexual / emotional abuse of children like them is being ignored https://childrenoftransitioners.org/2023/07/15/six-children/)

Only anecdotal from a SW lecturer in the 1990's.

@Dumbo12 can you provide a source please?