Brighton and Hove council Trans Tool kit is likely illegal - Brighton family threatening legal action if not withdrawn

I had no idea about this. ND DGS is about to go to secondary school in September. To have to put up with this sxxt besides the general adaptation from primary to 'big' school is disgraceful and dangerous. DD is not sadly GC so I can't take up the issue with her as she no doubt thinks it's all fine. Is there any way of finding out which schools have taken on this 'toolkit'?

Sympathy and solidarity.

Does anyone have an update on what’s happening with the Brighton case?

Yes, it's a failure of central government. In KCSIE it specifies safeguarding has primacy over GDPR. I.e. you can breach GDPR if needed for safeguarding a child.

We need something similar regarding EA 2010 as children ARE NOT MINI ADULTS! If they were they wouldn't be in school but out working, like in Victorian England!

(sorry, bit fed up about this).

What I will say is that parents have power, and for many schools (not all) it does not need to be combative. I'm a governor as well as a parent and my older child's school had a couple of trans activist teachers the first year. Teachers are stretched at all times, working long hours with insufficient resources and expected - increasingly - to pick up what should be social services work. To feed children who are hungry because their parents can't afford food. It's bloody hard being a teacher in a state school and activists can quite easily sneak things in without other overstretched staff noticing. In my DDs school, this had a very quick course correction once the HT was aware of what had happened via parents point it out.

In my experience MOST teachers really do want the best for children, they would be doing an easier job if they didn't. Unfortunately activist teachers have been able to run amok partly because schools are stretched and in the absence of a clear steer from government.

I do think it would be ideal to have a few high profile sackings of teachers who have breached safeguarding spectacularly, and government guidance needs to be statutory.

And the captured parts of the DBS service also need sacking - at the moment teachers will be scared not to capitulate for fear of getting DBS barred as Kevin Lister was.

If anyone who has written to Brighton secondaries has received a response from the school on this, could they share it with me? via PM if they prefer? As a concerned parent of a secondary age child in Brighton would love to know what they say.

From the legal opinion:
3.3. The Toolkit barely addresses the position of girls and boys who do not
identify as trans and the impact upon them of trans inclusion.
3.4. The Toolkit does not address the position of pupils and members of staff
who hold particular religious or philosophical beliefs, including “gender
critical beliefs”.
...
206. The Toolkit barely touches upon safeguarding and where it does, the central and almost sole focus is on trans children.
207. There is no mention of the impact of trans inclusion on girls and the risk of sexual violence and harassment

Thank you Karon Monaghan KC. Why does it take 75 pages of Leading Counsel's opinion (not a cheap undertaking) to state the incredibly obvious.

Also, is there a gardening project for this, or has someone got deep pockets?

The final paragraph of the article is very chilling.

No problem! You ae right, many councils did withdraw following action from parents across the UK.

Fantastic, thank you.

The CPS also pulled their appalling guidelines for schools rather than face a JR. It's wrong that we need legal cases to get these dangerous child gaslighting policies out of schools - safeguarding should be intrinsic for every local authority - but no longer as we keep seeing.

This. Please do cite these challenges when you approach your local authority. No one was prepared to defend these "toolkits" in court. Because they're awful.

Apologies meant to quote you @2fallsfromSSA

It's definitely worth sharing with schools. and I would say share the case against OCC because they withdrew the toolkit rather than face legal action. It's practically the same toolkit.

YY. There were other LAs who caved in this way due to challenge from people using your template ISTR, but I suspect Brighton will be the "final boss" of them and won't go easily.

Here is our 14 days to withdraw letter from the OCC challenge. People are welcome to edit and use themselves.

safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/lea-toolkit-letter-template-1.docx

It's actually more useful than the Cass review. As it specifically outlines the law and how the tool kit breaks it, noting the relevant parts of Cass. Which I doubt many slt will have the time to spend analysing at length.

I do hope this is picked up by the press. Schools must start to be aware of the dangers of all this - for children but also for their reputation.

As there's a new Head at the once Stonewall captured Ofsted I'm cautiously hopeful that parents reporting a school for secretly socially grooming their child into transitioning will get a response from them.

I also second (third, fourth?) sharing it - the fact that there is a pending case should be enough to make schools/governing bodies cautious about continued reliance on it, as a successful outcome would make them culpable for that continued reliance from the date they were made aware of the case/risk?

Technically everything in that letter should be part of the guidance for schools and be statutory.

That's my point @MrsOvertonsWindow, it's designed to prompt a school to realise they're breaking the law and correct it or face court. It so good and detailed it doesn't need to be tested in court - so yes, share everywhere!

It's definitely worth sharing with schools. and I would say share the case against OCC because they withdrew the toolkit rather than face legal action. It's practically the same toolkit.

As it's a KC's informed legal opinion so I would think is worthy of sharing?
We know there are other KCs who will argue that children's safety and well being should take second place to the demands of adults to push gender reassignment at them. That's where we keep ending up - which is more important? Children believing they can change sex urged on by certain adults or children being safeguarded from the delusion that their bodies are wrong but a sex change will cure them?

The CPS also pulled their appalling guidelines for schools rather than face a JR. It's wrong that we need legal cases to get these dangerous child gaslighting policies out of schools - safeguarding should be intrinsic for every local authority - but no longer as we keep seeing.

But that's a good point, if tested it's unanimous.

I'm uncertain if it needs to be tested in court? - the letter outlines all the ways in which the law is broken by the tool kit. Possibly if the school refuse it goes to court?