NHS Policy Audit - working party -Thread #3

Berkshire Healthcare submitted

Not sure, think it was Andy Burnham (not Milburn) as health minister from June 2009 to May 2010?

@FarriersGirl and @Cantunseeit, thank you for those - I’ll do some digging!

Could you hit me up for a couple more Trusts if there are still any waiting to be allocated? Thank you

One of the mental health trusts in the East of England which I audited also included this

Could I be allocated a trust pl

@KnottyAuty upthread there was an ask for any particularly egregious and potentially newsworthy examples. Months ago before we got going on the audit I read up some policies and guidelines on my local acute trust website and they had a zero tolerance of any patient potentially misgendering/harassing a trans staff member, describing it as a hate incident. Unfortunately looking now the information has gone, a link I had is broken so it has been removed from the public facing pages. It wasn't a trust that I audited but might be worth a look to see if it was picked up by whomever did do it - Sherwood Forest Hospitals

@GreenAllOver, just finished reading the two Medium articles and they are Something Else. (Note to everyone else - they are worth a read.)

My gods and this was 2017/2018? And here we are, nearly 10 years down the line and still dealing with this insanity?

Yes Lansley was telling the plebs that
"Patients and members of the public will be able to see which services continue to allow patients to suffer the indignity of mixed sex accommodation." But before May I bet any Trust Director you'd ask would have said the same thing. It wasn't true then and it still isn't true now. My Trust still has, and always had, patient information leaflets saying 'you will be cared for in a single sex bay' although the policy (ahem, now quietly taken down from the intranet) always said transpeople could self ID where they were put.

Lansley knew full well that the policy was being badged as single sex but was actually single gender. It was pointed out to him at at least one Dept of Health meeting re the policy that the name was misleading, but he decreed they kept calling it single sex 'to aid public understanding '. Actually, to aid our misunderstanding that single sex wards weren't single sex wards.

Thanks for the link @GreenAllOver. I was particularly interested in the info near the end where the CQC had figures on the reported sexual assaults and rapes in mental health units. My DSis is now retired but spent 30 years as a mental health professional both on wards and in the community. In her experience such assaults were always recorded on Datix so presumably, somewhere there would be both local and national records? Does anyone know where? Would it be worth an FOI request?

There’s a January 2009 speech saying much the same thing. Various different SofS’s for Health got a lot of mileage out of it as an issue.

@GreenAllOver, oh I’m glad you spotted that thread with the link to the “let’s go back” thread - I was going to point it out to you but got waylaid.

I’ve just (thanks to another thread) found some excellent research on the history of sex and gender in the NHS. I’ll add it in to the jotform when I get time, but for now here’s the link:
https://medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-1e8f4e6363a6

And there’s also a lot of things I want to follow up from this thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3463920-Lets-go-back-to-2007?reply=83696520
For instance, I had no idea that GIRES was founded as the charitable (ie non political) arm of Press for Change. There’s also a lot on there on related issues, like the definition of ‘trans’ in law, and the suicide statistics.

If PencilsInSpace is still around and reading, her posts on that thread were fantastic, she’s clearly super knowledgable and it would be great if she was able to read this thread and add anything that she knows. She pointed out that women weren’t consulted on changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 1999, while Press for Change were! Which reminded me, I found some Dept of Health guidance on gender and access to services written by the Men’s Health Forum, with no matching guidance by a women’s health group.

SuppoRTT covers all of England, it’s funded by Health Education England. I’m not sure what will happen to it now HEE is going.

I can't speak for all professions within the NHS, or all geographical areas, but the North West has what can be a very generous & wide-ranging return to work support programme called SuppoRTT for medical/dental professionals in training programmes, it covers return from maternity/parental leave along with many other reasons for absence/being new to the NHS etc.
SuppoRTT

Thank you for that! I will do some digging…

I hadn’t specificallly known about GIRES’s involvement, but I have been keeping half an eye out for the conflation of GIRES and DSD/intersex, and haven’t spotted it in the guidance I’ve seen.

There’s a huge amount of content, from what I’ve uploaded to the jotform on Dept of Health guidance and BeLemonHam’s input on equality guidance. I think there’s probably enough for someone to go through and audit development of policy around sex/gender as it relates to:

• Children and young people, especially Gillick competence (and lack of it not being a barrier to overruling parents’ wishes)
• Older people (especially those with dementia or delirium)
• People with mental health problems, especially those on secure (ie locked, can’t leave) wards
• Consideration (or lack of consideration) for people who are not trans and an attempt to balance rights
• Going ‘beyond the law’ or giving advice (eg best practice examples) which encourage readers to believe that self ID is the law
• Positive discrimination in favour of trans employees (eg in terms of how medical leave for transition is treated, compared to comparable reasons for medical leave)
• Privacy and dignity, and how the right to privacy about a GRC has been developed, argued and used. There’s a wider issue about using Government guidance to encourage individuals to take legal action against public bodies.
• The legal and ethical status of Dept of Health guidance which was written by interest groups such as GIRES. With follow up questions about whether this avoided the usual civil service checks and balances (including legal checks) and the Ministerial approval process, which is necessary for democratic accountability (Nolan principles).