Safeguarding children from their parents

[womanformallyknownaswoman]

One of the key issues Heather Brunskell-Evans referenced in her recent interview on the Megan Murphy podcast was about how many people are afraid of personal and job reprisals if they publicly raise their concerns about the current trend to diagnose ‘gender non-conforming’ children as transgender.

Of particular concern to me was her assertion that workers employed in children's, plus counselling, welfare services and the like, are effectively being muzzled by the climate of assigning dissent to fascism. The real retribution from policies and workplaces that assert that dissent is transphobic, and hence a violation of their employment contract, is an effective and extremely concerning method of coercively controlling people into silence, who have legitimate concerns about the welfare of children.

She also stated that some of these employees are prevented from voicing their very real concerns for children's welfare at the hand of their parents. These parents are adamant that any sign of their children showing any deviation from the road of their definition of "normal" for their sex thus means the child is trans-gender. These parents are not moved by counsellors and the like expressing the view that the children are not abnormal nor transgender but just undergoing normal childhood developments stages.

I am curious as to whether anyone here can confirm from their lived experience that her concerns are all too real.

@womanformallyknownaswoman

It wasn’t too clear the extracts cited by @rowdy - did the mother involved have other male children (and no daughters)? That might go some way to explaining her completely batshit behaviour- overwhelmingly desire for a little girl.

Don't disagree with you @rowdywomen1 however it will be individual cases not blanket policy is the point I am making...I would imagine there have been other factors at play for the case to have got there in the first place ie the parenting as opposed to the transgender bit per se...if you see what I mean?

The initial case seems to have been taken under private law by the father...social services then being ordered by the court to investigate as a result of proceedings...

In some ways the transgender bit is a red herring and is what has obviously thrown the initial response to referrals out...the main points at play were the physical neglect of child lack of schooling lack of pa rental contact adversity from the mother to professionals....these are generally facets of any protection case and with every new social phenomena social workers need to learn to look past to the actual evidence of harm as a result of the care giver..

Whilst I am not justifying the social work response it is unlikely that at the point they would have had solid grounds to go straight for a care order and in reality that the absent parent was en couraged to take protective measures to apply for residence under private law....which in turn resulted in a full investigation and direction from the court to remain involved via care order..this would have been normal practice in my experience as it is an easier process to achieve safeguarding of child under residence arrangements to an absent parent than trying to go directly via care order to local authority...

Very interesting case...thanks for posting..

@MrsUnderwood
The extracts quoted are from the judgement in the court case about child J - I've linked the full judgement in the second post on the thread. There were no siblings.

The whole judgement is really worth reading as it demonstrates how a parent can undermine the systems that we have put in place to safeguard children. It is often noted in serious case reviews (when a child has died) that a child's welfare can go unnoticed by professionals charged keeping them safe, in the face of aggressive, hostile and obstructive behaviour. In this case the judge is repeatedly clear that too many professionals were reluctant to challenge emotional abuse because the issues of transgenderism almost silenced them applying their professional skills.

When the school and other agencies made a number of safeguarding referrals about possible emotional abuse of J (then aged 4), social services dismissed them all seeing the schools's concerns as a form of religious intolerance!

J was removed from his mother and now lives with his father - because his mother has developed a belief structure which she has imposed on her child. One of the judge's conclusions was:

Transgender equality has received a great deal of attention in recent times. I believe that in this case the profile and sensitivity of the matters raised by the mother blinded a number of professionals from applying their training, skills and, it has to be said, common sense. They failed properly to investigate M's assertions, in part I suspect, because they did not wish to appear to be challenging an emerging orthodoxy in such a high profile issue

It is worth noting that Mermaids mounted a campaign against this judgement.

Organizations like Gendered Intelligence & Mermaids are very good at promoting their approach, running workshops for teachers responsible for safeguarding & child mental health. Teachers & school counsellors, who have the best intentions find it hard not to accept their guidance. I think there is a lot of unrecognized misogyny in middle class society.

Cross posted @nightshade!
The judge is clear that this is about a mother harmfully imposing her beliefs on her child and causing him emotional harm:

I consider that M has caused significant emotional harm to J in her active determination that he should be a girl. I find that she has overborne his will and deprived him of his fundamental right to exercise his autonomy in its most basic way. Whether J chooses to present as a girl or not, ought to be his choice. This is not a case about gender dysphoria, rather it is about a mother who has developed a belief structure which she has imposed upon her child.

Where it seems that the transgender issue had the greatest negative impact is in how it affected the behaviour of professionals. That I think should be the issue of great concern to us all.

Look at training materials that breach safeguarding principles:

Training packs telling teachers that they can keep a child's disclosure confidential
Transgender guidelines undermining a child's right to consent
Guidelines that state that parents shouldn't have information about their child shared with them

The only people protesting about this seems to be feminists. It is breathtaking that this is not being formally challenged.

Where it seems that the transgender issue had the greatest negative impact is in how it affected the behaviour of professionals. That I think should be the issue of great concern to us all.

Exactly. I haven't read the judgement for a while and don't have time now but, if I recall, the child had been referred to Tavistock and the mother had even stopped co-operating with them as soon as they did not buy into her disordered thinking about the child. So many red flags ignored.

The issue in this case wasn't whether the child was trans or not trans, but Mum's disordered thinking. And Mum wasn't malicious. But Mum had (accidentally?) hit on exactly the right issue to disguise the emotional harm she was doing, because all the professionals could see was - trans or not trans?