Still Asleep at the Wheel: A Further Examination of Gender and Safeguarding in Schools - Policy Exchange

I'm going to butt in here, as an experienced teacher, and address myself to any non-SLT teachers reading along. You are employed to teach Maths or Year 3 or whatever. You also have pastoral responsibilities for a group of children which involve helping every child to thrive in school. You are not a 'friend' to any of these children, you are their teacher. That is your professional role. You have zero qualifications in social work, psychotherapy, medicine or counselling and you have actually had very little safeguarding training compared to more senior staff. You know much less than you imagine about the individual pupils that you teach. If you ever have any worry that a child is at the start of a pathway that may lead to harm, then your absolute responsibility is to bring this to the attention of the DSL at your school, using whatever mechanism your school employs.
Conversations about involving parents or not should be held at DSL level. These are not your decisions to make.

As you were.

Depends on the circumstances. It might be best to help the soon to be adult gain that independence covertly by the time she is 18 and just leave as an adult with certain rights already in place.

Its not as simple as a child saying that their parents may bea danger to them. This is why when you've actualy worked in roles supporting children and young people, you have a better understanding of nuance and that there isnt a one size fits all approach. Especially in a system where foster care for older teens is often semi independent living without the supervision they really need.

Yes I think adults should ultimately make the choice when a child doesnt want to disclose. That choice might be not to tell the parents.

I dont agree with socially transitioning at school, but nor do I know that telling you would be the right thing, either.

And this could also apply to beliefs that girls should marry early or that religion trumps children's personal ambitions.
I wonder if@GlovedhandsCecilia would report a family to social services if a girl said she wanted to go to university but was afraid her family would harm her if she told them?

Children are not able to safeguard themselves. This is a fundamental principle of safeguarding and this is why you cannot (at least I hope not) be in charge of safeguarding any actual children.
This includes children not being able to decide when things should be kept a secret and children not being able to decide when social services should be involved.
You may have different opinions but if you went on a safeguarding course and said "I'm not going to tell social services/the DSL in my school in some cases where a child says their parents are a danger to them" then you would not be proceeding into a safeguarding role.

I've seen a number of professionals lose their jobs for deciding their opinions mattered more than statutory safeguarding guidelines. Tragically in most of the cases it was a child who suffered awful consequences.

My lived experience of this with my DD’s school is that school staff very much DO NOT have the experience and education to make these decisions.

My experience is replicated (or worse) by other parents of gender questioning children socially transitioned at school.

Safeguarding is preventative and relies on foreseeing worst possible scenarios. As we know the worst possible scenarios are ALREADY playing out across multiple schools in the UK ( and the research this thread is about confirms this). A position that states that parents must always be told unless clear risk of harm means SS must be informed is obviously proportionate under the circs.

I disagree. I think if there are evidence based guidelines, then the professionals should be the right people due to their objectivity. I don't think they should discourage a child who wants to disclose to family, but i don't think they should force the family to know if a child discloses, either. Not in every case..

Systems are trying to become more culturally aware to better serve and protect the communities they have a duty to. That's actually part of my job.

Fortunately society takes a different view and knows that society has a responsibility to safeguard all children and not just selected groups. It's not a perfect system but to suggest that some children should be removed from statutory safeguarding is very irresponsible.
As we've been pointing out to transactivists for years.

Agreed. It's worth reiterating that this demand for secrecy is a wholly activist led demand and bears no relationship to the careful management of safeguarding in schools that must offer guidance for all adults who have contact with children.

There are a number of aspects of the draft KCSIE guidelines that retain transactivist demands - we know what a grip they have on the government and DfE / civil service so it's not a surprise to see them still attempting to remove this vulnerable group of children from standard safeguarding practice. Hopefully the promotion of this professionally dangerous advice will be amended if there's enough feedback about the implications for these vulnerable children.

No. They’re very much open to a range of biases here.

Beliving that a child can and should change sex is a belief.

Many schools are operating under an ideology. Ideology is incompatible with safeguarding.

My big concern is that schools rely on companies now to deliver their safeguarding training.

What I have seen of some companies is either flimsy (across all areas of safeguarding) or at worse incorrect - The National recycled an old pre Cass set of guidelines this last academic year despite Cass now being part of kcsie.

The Key is and was 100 times worse. (From what I’ve been told a trans identified male is on their safeguarding team.)

What ever is in kcsie could be diluted.

parents are going to have to continue to scrutinise the document themselves as well as current evidence and make a fuss with schools (using their complaint policy system.)

I also know why these systems often dont work effectively for people from certain backgrounds and that is why we have specific organisations that better serve us and understand the nuances of our situations.

I think school staff (including pastoral care) generally have the experience and education to make that decision.

Agree that that would be be a Cpoms niggle so that the senior leaders, pastoral and designated safeguarding lead would also see it. If they had further concerns (ideally) they’d be able to make a judgement on what to do next and at what point to inform parents.

This is where it will be very muddy in the guidelines. Some staff wouldn’t cpom that. Schools are likely to have to come up with their own policies here. Schools that are TRA ish may be more problematic than others.

This is where there will certainly be more cases that end up having to go through the courts. Blind eyes will be turned.

Cpoms are evidence and can and are used in legal cases. It’s also very helpful to read back through cpom history to get an idea about what a child has experienced over their school years. We now have Cpom histories that go back to nursery. Conversations with parents both email and verbal are recorded- they must be able to be held up on a court of law so must be accurate records and not conjecture.

Teachers and SLT have a duty of care. The safeguarding policies are designed for the child and the staff - the Head could be sued so has a responsibility to make sure policy is enforced throughout schools.

Parents can ask for a copy of the Cpoms record at any point iirc.

“Why was I not told of this” will undoubtedly be a phrase uttered by parents in some areas in the years to come.

One issue that's repeatedly highlighted in Serious Case Reviews / Safeguarding Practice Reviews is the catastrophic impact of individuals or organisations deciding that they know better than our extensive statutory safeguarding advice and guidance. The failure to share relevant information with other agencies (and occasionally within an institution) regularly leads to child deaths and extended abuse with opportunities being missed to safeguard a child because individuals decide they know better than decades of evidence and statutory advice.

Of course on an internet forum everyone is entitled to their opinion. Fortunately safeguarding is not based on random opinions - even when they offer legitimate concerns about children's fear of disclosing because of SS involvement. Adults who work with children are trained to be aware of this and to understand that ignoring guidance leaves children at risk and without support.
The range of in depth case reviews regularly evidences how those who ignore safeguarding guidelines are often directly responsible when children are not safeguarded from harm.

But who gets to decide @GlovedhandsCecilia which time is right vs not right?

It may well be that you are extremely knowledgeable about the whole range of transitioning or gender questioning youth issues including the Cass report, Finnish studies, the known side effects of CSHs etc and that you’d never counsel a student that you didn’t know extremely well.

However, I doubt every single teacher does know the subject or the student. That raises questions about the risks, including safeguarding risks, of leaving important decisions solely to teacher and child. And in almost every other case, we’d never advocate for a teacher to tell a student ‘this is a secret’ so why does gender ideology get a pass here?

Not in every single case. Sometimes there are other, better ways to support the child until they age out of having to be at home. I know a lot of the young people in this situation won't disclose the risk of harm because they know it could result in SS being involved and they don't think that is the appropriate or even best thing for them.

It's the right thing to do a lot of the time. Not every time.

I dont think that's the best way to safeguard children in every situation like this.

That was not the entirety of what RTB said though. You’re missing the bit where she said if there were genuine concerns that telling the parents would result in parental harm to the child, then SS should be told.

Would you agree with that?

I don’t think @GlovedhandsCecilia really cares about child safety. I think they just care about grandstanding.

If they cared, they would understand that if you suspect that telling a parent about something a child has told you would put the child in danger, then the child is already in danger.

Because that information the child shared will not stay secret - it will get back to the parents by some other means, and harm will be done.

And you, as an adult will have had the chance to stop it by involving social services when the child told you and you will not have - because you felt keeping the secret was more important than the actual safety of the child. So the harm to the child will not only happen anyway, but it will happen and it will be in part your fault.

That is why safeguarding exists. To stop harm before it happens. If you cannot see that, I hope to gods you are not involved in the care of children.