New NHS guidance on same sex accommodation

[LukewarmCustard]

The guidance starts out well. '1.2 Guidance statement: Providers of NHS-funded care are expected to have a zero-tolerance approach to mixed-sex accommodation, except where it is in the overall best interest of all patients affected.'

But then there is Annex B, which says 'Trans people should be accommodated according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use. This may not always accord with the physical sex appearance of the chest or genitalia. It does not depend on their having a gender recognition certificate (GRC) or legal name change. It applies to toilet and bathing facilities (except, for instance, that preoperative trans people should not share open shower facilities).' Annex B was apparently written with input from the Government Equalities Office.

NHS accommodation is now mixed sex accommodation with allocations based on pronouns.

Exactly OldCrone. Arguably not doing that is a failure of Public Sector Equality Duty.

If, on admission, it is impossible to ask the view of the person because he or she is unconscious or incapacitated then, in the first instance, inferences should be drawn from presentation and mode of dress. No investigation as to the genital sex of the person should be undertaken unless this is specifically necessary to carry out treatment.

So, bunch of male uni students out on the piss, dressed up in women's clothes because they think it's a larf. Alcohol poisoning ensues/party bus gets into an accident, everyone unconscious. Put them all in the women's ward? What could possibly go wrong?

Did Equality Impact Assessments come into existence at the same time as the Equality Act? Or did they follow some time after the act was made law?

Because the original policy was written in 2009/2010. This may be why no EIA was carried out. The policy may have preceded the requirement.

I haven’t read the replies on here but I’ll post anyway

I work for the nhs. We have wards where half is female the other half is male

99% of the time if someone is trans they are given their very own side room which is usually used for either contagious patients or really poorly patients

I have known really poorly patients been put back into the bay so a trans patient can have the side room.

99% of the time if someone is trans they are given their very own side room which is usually used for either contagious patients or really poorly patients
Which is fabulous kind of, except for the really poorly patient who may need the room more.
Once this info gets out there
Everyone will identify as non binary to get a private room and or, the type of men that think women are just to be used will self I'd as nb or trans to get on a ward with them. In hospital where they can be very vulnerable, this seems like a shitty idea.
Curious about trans men? Do they get a side room in the mens wards?

MIL recently spent a week in a ward with a 'lady' who had a penis, stubble and chest hair. This lady loudly farted at will and scratched her scrotum whilst she wore pink floral pyjama bottoms, no top but open pink gown make up.

This lady's manner was verbally aggressive to staff who were treating her as best they could. Their stand off attitude was more to do with her vile behaviour than her penis!

This is terrifying reading. I wad in hospital last week on a mixed sex ward, but bays were sex segregated. I didn't realise that it was mixed sex until I walked down the corridor to the loo. It wasn't a problem.

Our bay of 6 women was lovely and supportive. The more well lady of the ward wills go and sit by the most distressed (at a guess early dementia) lady and encourage her to eat, find her hearing aids etc. I exchanged pleasantries with my neighbours, and rang the buzzer to tell the staff when the most poorly lady on our bay had a fit. I was able to feel that a curtain was enough privacy to discuss my embarrassing female organ symptoms with the doctors and nurses.

If the person opposite me had been as described there is no way I would have relaxed. I would probably have kept quiet about some of my symptoms and would have been baying for an early discharge, which given that it took 6 days for doctors to work out why my body was failing I dread to think what would have happened.

People like him don't belong on women's wards. It's as obvious as the day is long.

99% of the time if someone is trans they are given their very own side room which is usually used for either contagious patients or really poorly patients

I have known really poorly patients been put back into the bay so a trans patient can have the side room.

So a really poorly/highly contagious patient could be moved from the best place to protect them and everybody else on the ward to a suboptimal place because a bloke who gets his thrills from dressing in a nightie (AGP) is more important than the result poorly patient or the rest of the ward's protection. Got it.

I was in hospital for a week earlier in the month on a mixed sex ward - single sex bays but you had to walk past the men to get to the showers. Also the women’s bay was full of male visitors all day and well into the night. It felt really uncomfortable and made a stressful visit worse.

So a really poorly/highly contagious patient could be moved from the best place to protect them and everybody else on the ward to a suboptimal place because a bloke who gets his thrills from dressing in a nightie (AGP) is more important than the result poorly patient or the rest of the ward's protection. Got it.

And the alternative is the scenario in the comment above, where the same individual is allowed to make the lives of the women in their ward miserable to the point where their care will be compromised.

I feel like there's no way out of this situation until society is willing to admit that it's the male individual who likes wearing frilly nighties and who thinks that makes them a woman who's the problem, and stops trying to distort the entire system to accommodate their preferences. Why can't they go in a curtained off part of the men's ward.

Also, what's currently done with the many teenaged female transitioners? Because putting them in with the men would be so obviously dangerous that I can't imagine their parents would allow it. Surely there are limits to being woke.

I work for the NHS. Our trans policy is terrible . I read it a few months ago and was going to post it on here but forgot. However we have two very vocal trans women working at the trust and they had a lot of input I think.

As an aside. I went to town this weekend and there was a very distressed homeless trans woman sitting on the pavement. 6ft tall, very overweight, stubble and quite clearly a man. No top, flowery skirt and bows in their hair. Self harm cuts everywhere (some actively bleeding at the time). Drunk and screaming a passers by to stop looking at her and then loudly weeping.

It was horrible horrible horrible to witness. I asked the zone wardens to go and help them (or at least remove them, very distressing for the kids to see) and they said they were known to them, very violent and they had already been picked up by the police twice that weekend. Mental health and trans issues out of control

That’s interesting Mini. Is it a specialist ward then, since it’s mixed anyway? Do you know if it’s the general practice in most wards? Seems sensible in many ways, though not great if there’s already a need for the room for another patient.

What does your trust do with transmen, Philli? I'm especially worried about the young ones, who seem the least likely to put practicality before ideology.

It demonstrates that women's rights are demolished by trans rights.

1. Women have a right to female same-sex spaces.
2. Men now have a right to access those same female same-sex spaces.
3. Women no longer have a right to female same-sex spaces.

That’s interesting Mini. Is it a specialist ward then, since it’s mixed anyway? Do you know if it’s the general practice in most wards

I’m not mini but the ward I was on was not specialist. It was three bays of eight beds each and two bays were male one female.

Joani thank you what brilliant work

@BadgertheBodger There are pdfs of the original piece on my website - click through to the rest of the story on page two which includes the story of a nurse who had a trans woman on her ward. I didn't put up the next day's story of trans girls going onto girls' wards. I'll have the pdf somewhere. The policy is the same as most of the individual trusts', but explicit.

joaniwalsh.com/portfolio-items/nhs-trans-row-as-men-get-access-to-womens-wards-if-they-identify-as-female/?portfolioCats=26

@Barracker The original guidance was 2010. But most of the trusts' policies are recent.

Of those who stated their EIAs they were all tested against trans patients - so was the trans policy fair on trans patients because of their age, religious beliefs etc.

I've got the names of the organisations that advised individually but most seemed to be small scale, local or internal organisations. The main guidance came from GIRES.

However we have two very vocal trans women working at the trust and they had a lot of input I think

Glad to hear you have a diverse Trust. However this ‘input’ is lobbying and particularly for one interest group. On that basis alone those individuals should not be allowed to remain.

The purpose of a trust or advisory board (if that’s where they sit) is to ensure policy is adhered to. It is specifically NOT to represent any interest groups.

I recruit to a fair number of boards and have seen this in applicants who think it’s a way to push their own agenda. I would bet my hat this is what’s going on here. Institutional capture.

Personality wise - interesting isn’t it.

Fucking Hell I’ve only just caught up with this. I used to work for a forerunner to NHSI and I think they’ve got this very wrong.

Once upon a time we would have consulted with the public and representative groups to develop this sort of guidance. Am I going to be surprised at who was consulted on this one I wonder?

A few years back I was in a "women's hospital" part of a major teaching hospital in London's East End. It was chaos. Almost all the other patients seemed to be of Muslim South Asian origin, and my guess is that husbands, were either unwilling to leave their wives in an environment where they might meet men, or that they had no child care. Either way extended families stayed through the night, with children running up and down corridors. It imposed an additional burden on staff who were in no way able to even try and impose visiting hours. I can't imagine what would happen if you added a transwoman to the mix.

Trans right groups I suspect. You know the worst done by entity in the whole history of the world (besides Donald trump). Bless the weans...

In my understanding an Equality Impact Assessment is supposed to assess the impact of a proposed policy on all members of all the protected characteristics, not just the specific one the policy is for in 8 different ways.

So they should have looked at the impact on all women (and men - to see whether there was an impact on people because of their sex but women tend to be disadvantaged), all elderly people, all religious people, so they could avoid where possible directly or indirectly discriminating against a protected characteristic. It's not enough to only look at potential discrimination from the perspective of trans people and fuck everyone else.

Who is managing this shit?

I have known really poorly patients been put back into the bay so a trans patient can have the side room.

This is awful. Dying patients (and their relatives) denied the privacy of side rooms for sadpenisfeelz.

It's not enough to only look at potential discrimination from the perspective of trans people and fuck everyone else.

Unfortunately that's exactly what many organisations seem to think it's for. Because they've been lobbied by groups like GIRES, Stonewall and Mermaids.