LGB Alliance starts Helpline for teens and young adults

If the LGB Alliance were ever under any misapprehension that the prejudice would start and end with transphobia and never migrate to homophobia they will quickly be disabused of that now 😂

thank you, that answers my question and that sounds eminently sensible.

This is the overall issue. It might seem subtle but it's more and more common and sends a terrible message to children especially. We shouldn't be normalising any sort of equivalence between a child of 13 and a young adult.

From the LGBA website

All contacts will be asked how old they are so that the volunteer can respond to them in an age-appropriate and responsible manner. It will also ensure that they can advise children against risky or illegal contact with others.

It's not my chat line FYI.

But that surely is the point. Legally things change at different ages so having age appropriate separation will help protect LGBA as much as anyone contacting them.

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, but children & adults aren't mixing - except insofar as children will be talking to adult volunteers. The LGBA make it clear that when people use the chat they will be asked their age. If all volunteers are trained to work with both over and under 18s then they will know what they can and can't say, depending on the age. Which protocol is suitable. Which guidelines to use. Again the LGBA make this very clear, information and any advice will be age appropriate. Each volunteer is also supervised as an extra level of oversight.

Anyway my issue isn't around the helpline itself, it's about promoting the idea that 13-17 year olds are 'young people' alongside 17-24 year olds. It's a subtle thing, but it is a blurring of boundaries.

A long time ago I attended a course for parents of disabled children. All our kids were 6-8 years old. Throughout, one of the course leaders referred to our children as 'your young person/s' never ever saying 'your child/ren'. Like other euphemisms - describing disabled children as having additional or special needs for example - it results in a perception shift. Children - and disabled people - have specific protections and rights for good reasons, and when we mess about with the language it's easier to forget about those rights and protections.

Right, so is the helpline not going to ask the age of the person contacting them? I would have thought they would given that it is an age targeted service. As they would have to signpost to other services for anyone under 13 and over 24. If they aren’t, then that’s the obvious solution isn’t it? And then the call handler follows the procedure for the self declared age of the “caller”.

i picked 16 as the cut off because AlisonDonut was discussing age of consent and sex. I thought that was the issue, not the legal definition of a child.

Yes, I agree that different literature and a dedicated number for under 18s would be a better option. I just can’t get on board with the suggestion that LGB children do not exist or that it is inherently dangerous to provide space for children to discuss their worries regarding developing sexuality.

At this point because you just sound way too comfortable with mixing children's and adults, do you always feel that way? You're acting as though posters are making up the already very real safeguarding policies for over and under 18s. They exist for a reason. If I was a volunteer at this service I would want it to be clear that these are the guidelines of what I can say and talk about when manning the child service and these are the guidelines when I'm manning the adult service. For an online chat where you have literally no idea who you're talking to it protects the volunteer because they are following the guidelines for the service they're on, whether or not someone decides to falsely click on the adult service. I tried accessing the chat yesterday to see if it prescreened for ages first thing and it doesn't.

Presumably because PPs have raised the age of consent. It's why I wondered why there wasn't a push for 3 'helplines'. !6 year olds can be having sex legally, 15 year olds can't

Still unclear. Users give their age. The trained volunteer receives information from a child that then triggers a safeguarding concern. Why are they only able to act on this if the child has clicked on a chat for under 18s? They just need separate processes for over and under 18s.

Why have you picked 15 as a cut off?

Under 18s are children, not under 16s.

ETA: obviously under 16s are also all children, but the category of child ends at 18.

I'm sorry that you can't grasp the idea the same information disclosed by a child could trigger a safeguarding concern but not when mentioned by an adult.

Please spell it out for me because I’m obviously missing the point. The issue over adult safeguarding vs child safeguarding and the desire to have a separate number/site for children aged 13-15. What are you proposing that will actually be done differently for the 13-15 year old via their dedicated child friendly access and why can’t that be done for every person that contacts them?

By which poster? I haven't seen anyone suggest that unless I missed it. I said I was happy for there to be the same staff but either manning the child or adult service at any particular shift as each service would (and should) have separate policies and procedures to follow.

It's been mentioned upthread. Separate teams, all separately trained, all kept separate. As previous posters have said, teachers are expected to deal with all kinds of personal, emotional and learning issues across a large age-range. Why would this be different?

Perhaps posters could give their opinions when they've even bothered to read and realise it's not a bloody phone line. Why does everyone keep saying calls? It's not calls where you could at least hopefully tell if you are speaking to a young child even if they said they were 23. It's an online chat without even a prescreening question to filter by age. I don't know why people are so confused that people in schools under 18 are subject to under 18 safeguarding policies and adults are subject to adult safeguarding either, it's not that complicated.

So, all of you, you want separate services for the 14-16s, the 16-18s, and the 18s-24s? Separate offices, separate trainings, separate supervisory teams. And how do you propose that the LGBA (that Stonewall and Mermaids tried to bankrupt) can finance that? Is it safer to do nothing?

A VOIP phone system with two separate numbers, two separate websites would do it. Extra safeguarding measures for the child service.

I don't know why you're extrapolating into different offices etc? Categorising any questions or constructive criticism as being 'against' a project is frankly unhelpful. A safeguarding approach welcomes useful feedback, as LGBA themselves do.

You're gonna pull a muscle reaching that far.

I and others said why not have separate helplines, it's really not hard to have a "click here for our under 18 chatline" and another for adults. It wouldn't be much more expensive as it's only an online chat function on a website but it clearly differentiates between a service for children and for adults. Who said anything about separate offices?!

I went to a secondary school that had pupils from the age of 11 to 18. The teachers were perfectly able to adjust to dealing with all sorts of discussions and issues with individual students in an age appropriate way. And that was face to face in a mixed age environment. It’s done all the time.

i still don’t see the the problem with properly trained and supervised call handlers taking calls from the full age range of 13-24. Considering they’ll probably also be trained to sensitively deal with people who want help but are too young or too old, or who have different distressing issues but that’s the only number they could find and call, the time wasters and the downright nasty. I guess switching from a 13 to a 24 year old dealing with their sexuality would be simple by comparison.

Some of the people complaining remind me very much of the head of safeguarding for the LA I once worked for. She kept talking about how we needed to improve local children's provision and safeguarding, but vetoed every attempt to innovate or change on the basis that there was still risk/ people didn't get it/ there was no budget/ there were still ways that a dedicated predator could infiltrate. She never offered positive ways of moving forward — that wasn't her job. She was in charge when the LA was hit by a major safeguarding scandal and blamed various other managers for failing to introduce better provision.

So, all of you, you want separate services for the 14-16s, the 16-18s, and the 18s-24s? Separate offices, separate trainings, separate supervisory teams. And how do you propose that the LGBA (that Stonewall and Mermaids tried to bankrupt) can finance that? Is it safer to do nothing?

I already answered it in the previous posts. Hence suggesting reading the previous posts.

If you don't understand then that's not my fault.

I am not responding to previous posts, I am responding to yours.

You, not the LGB Alliance, said the following:

Sex is illegal before the age of consent. Or is supposed to be.

Therefore there can not be LGB children, but children who grow up to be LGB.

If you* *believe this is true, everything I have said in my previous post, none of which you have actually responded to in your comment, still stands.

If you don't believe this is true, why on earth would you say it?

If Mermaids had announced what the LGBA have announced, FWR would be up in arms. But the GC blinkers go in and it's all fine because we like the LGBA.

There's a massive difference between reinforcing a confused child's delusional, social-media-encouraged false belief that it's been born in the wrong body and opening the door to a life of drugs and devastating surgery to listening to a gay or lesbian or bi young person and telling them they're okay as they are and they're not alone. Being LGB doesn't require anyone to do anything, doesn't infringe on anyone's rights, doesn't require affirmation or special measures. My major concern is that because all the LGB youth groups are now T-captured, there is nowhere to refer young LGB people onto where someone won't try to persuade them that they're trans.

No one at the LGBA will be sending out binders or suggesting a vulnerable autistic child contacts Helen Webberley for wrong-sex hormones or doing anything that could permanently affect their fertility, sexual pleasure or ability to establish meaningful relationships.