Today’s daily dose of LangCleg sense

[OnlyTheTitOfTheLangBerg]

Because it bears repeating.

If someone was running a youth club for under 18's then all adult staff/helpers would need to be subject to Safeguarding policies.

If 'youth' groups also have members who are 18-25 yrs as well as children (14- 18yrs) then what? Who is the youth club member peer & who is the adult staff/helper? How are children Safeguarded- its surely not appropriate for that responsibility to fall to members?

WrathofAsyouwereKlop
Yes , I understand.

Even when disability is a factor , whatever the social arrangements are, there is vigilance.
A group where disability is not a factor....

There seem to be quite a lot of groups for LGBT youth that have an inappropriately wide age range (schoolkids to young adults). There was one in Toronto that went up to age 26? That's really not OK when the lower end of the age range is 14 ish.

I may be out of touch now , but a youth group supporting ages 14 to 25 would indicate to me a group supporting young people with disabilities.
Not ideal, but when services for this group is far and few between , where else can these young people socialise?

In such groups then Safeguarding principles for both children & vulnerable adults would apply.

Looks like the age 25 marker for disabled people is being exploited to apply to any youth group.

The 25 age marker for disabled people allows them time to catch up with their peer group.
DWP acknowledges this.
I don't know when it was first applied.

There was one in Toronto that went up to age 26? That's really not OK when the lower end of the age range is 14 ish.

The one that GNC Centric attended run by Morgan Page?

The description that Ben provides could be a case study in identifying Safeguarding failings & potential consequences of harm to the welfare of vulnerable children.

4thwavenow.com/2019/01/26/my-trans-youth-group-experience-with-morgan-page/

With the one in Toronto one of the young transmen who attended it said that Morgan whatsit (well known TRA, hopefully someone will remember the surname) would talk to them about how empowering sex work when they were still in high school and Morgan was already an adult. Which, again, really not appropriate.

ROw the archivist always knows! Thank you.

R0wantrees thanks

WrathofAsyouwereKlop I had this thought about the age being exploited a while ago, maybe last summer? Can’t remember what triggered it.

So would a youth group catering for 14 to 25 year olds need a single safeguarding lead, covering both children and vulnerable adults?

Careers advice extends to 25 for disabled people too, it must be a defined limit set by legislation somewhere.
I also have a sneaky feeling this has been hijacked by other not so vulnerable groups.

There's more by Ben (GNC Centric) about 'Coercion & Abuse in the Gender ID Community' speaking with Benjamin Boyce.

Boyce frames the discussion in the introduction,
"any group where there is a lapse or a lack of accountability there will be an abuse of power. Wherever there is no oversight or very explicit rules that disguish people in power from people who are not in power Those who are in power whether explicitly or implicitly will end up abusing those who are most vulnerable'

Ben is a very clear communicator & really good at identifying power dynamics. Identifying power dynamics is always important when considering Safeguarding since it directs focus to where abuse of power may occur & who is most at risk.
As previously, age & sex are always significant.

I was really very sorry to hear that she had been targetted by malicious reports on Twitter and has been banned from that SM platform.

So would a youth group catering for 14 to 25 year olds need a single safeguarding lead, covering both children and vulnerable adults?

Someone would have lead responsibility for the Safeguarding of the group.

Thanks R0wantrees , for the Ben/Benjamin Boyce discussion.

This is Ben GNC Centric's channel. She is really worth following & is very insightful.
www.youtube.com/channel/UCTY0IumyDAKe--wcRyL_Avg/videos

Sorry to jump so far back in the thread, but:

R0
People dont lose DBS.
Its a check which records convictions & relevant police information so that any organisation who employs adults to work with children or vulnerable people are aware of information which is relevant to the post.

and
Kittens
And so bit by bit the framework is eroded, and if it carries on like that we'll be back to the 70s. Which nobody who cares about child welfare should want.

When we're talking about schools and youth groups, the fact that vocal gender critical people are more likely to (perhaps even unbeknownst to themselves, and even if they know have no recourse to challenge it) have a "hate crime/noncrime incident" appear on their DBS because someone reported a tweet or Facebook post of theirs as a "hate incident." (Thank you thank you thank you for exposing this, FairCop!!!!)
This means that a new feature of the system makes it more likely that people who are likely to be concerned with proper Safeguarding are more likely to be excluded from places like schools and youth groups.
Even if it's not deliberate, it will nonetheless play into the hands of those who put their own desires or ideology ahead of our youngsters' well being.

It's so fucking sinister.

I really want LangCleg back, we need her here and now. We need organizations (and forums) that prioritize quality, relevant thinking over anyone's feelz.

LangClegflavouredbanana

I'm glad you posted just now as I wanted to respond to R0! (Again, so lovely to see you)

Re the TA who was supposedly shoplifting; The worry the op had was that if her colleague got caught, it would show on a renewed dbs, for current or future jobs. This woman was boasting about her shoplifting, showing goods she claimed to have taken, in school, repeatedly.

This is either a red flag for mh issues or someone who has a skewed view of boundaries. It's not appropriate in any situation; my point was that in either case (mh failing or blurred boundaries) it comes under safeguarding in terms of caring for colleagues or inappropriate behaviour. Training we've had explored how a schools (or organisation's) culture which can be influenced by a few big personalities and habits of down playing what some see as inappropriate social interaction can actually lead to individuals directly causing an unsafe space for children or flouting safeguarding structures, flippancy etc, bullying often colleagues and so on.

Obviously many people who may have offended in the past wish to move on and do so magnificently.

And yes I've got my tin hat on and am riding a zebra with that view but as we've repeatedly said and and also seen with certain rubber clad toilet visiting persons, a culture of inappropriate boundaries does not set an example for cast iron safeguarding.

It also appeared to have been a type of bullying / gaslighting as when the op challenged her, this woman then denied it all and completely blanked her, creating a difficult working environment.

But yes, an excellent point LangClegbananaflavoured, we may get "hate crimes" on a dbs check which are actually people trying to query the madness.

We are certainly seeing some investigations within schools and other institutions, social workers for holding these views.

A friend who has just got a new job in social work has been told under no circumstances to comment on social media about political things. Which is very worrying; the people who would actually be seeing real potential harm in action in the trans debate cannot comment in it publicly.

If 'youth' groups also have members who are 18-25 yrs as well as children

I'm following one on Instagram for LGBTQ+. There's posts about members celebrating their 18th birthday.

My mind boggles.

I was in venture scouts many moons ago, pre safeguarding; young people in their 20's stayed on and helped as leaders. But there were relationships on trips away. 16 yrs olds and 20 yr olds.

Btw, BenGNC comments in one film
That she had never heard the word safeguarding till she read about all this in the UK but knowing about it would have helped her tremendously growing up.

Ps the Instagram account I'm following had AC offering private chats to youths attending the group.

Sorry posting before cbbc runs out and I have to adult/ parent.

Regarding LEA/ LAs, I've been trying to work out what happens locally.

My own LEA appears to have retained a central structure. Our safeguarding training is very high quality due to I think an odd / blind spot safeguarding incident a decade ago and run by LA / LEA employees. I can't see any guidance published around trans or LGBTQ.

And yet another nearby LA has a rainbow splattered document entitled "LGBTQ guidance for schools." It's clearly received support from an outside organisation in writing it.

I searched for the LEA where I live (they've had NO training and are running NO in a few schools, including my son's) and the council are apparently 'very good on employee trans inclusion' and have won awards for this.

When the tories decentralised education and many other things, it left a very confusing free for all. They wanted to create an environment where businesses and private organisations or charities provided educational resources and services. The previous primary curriculum had what was known as QCA documents which were schemes of work the government had written to deliver the curriculum objectives.

They were optional but showed exemplary practice and many schools used them. It provided consistency and orgs such as the BBC then created teaching aids and films etc that directly supported these units and so the curriculum.

All this went and some subjects areas became rather sparse in the new 2014 curriculum.

I've seen former teachers / LEA advisors who lost jobs in the LEA with the cuts, set up their own consultancies in their area (eg IT which includes online harms) which schools buy in. But this is easily things like No Outsiders, set up by a former teacher.

Ofsted training I've had under the sept 2019 rules states that the schemes of work (the content of the curriculum), in one school, may look very different to that of another school, so that the school can meet the needs of their cohorts. Which is great in theory, I do worry when it comes to RSE and PSHE. Also, subject leaders in primary schools are now "experts" in their field, needing to know and be on top of far more than a subject leader has ever had to do before. Writing the schemes of work (I do this myself) or buying in pre written ones to suit their children's needs. In my own school the pshe lead is a young keen teacher who's already bought 1000000000 dresses and sissy the duckling in. After seeing it on some website somewhere. We use NSPCC resources 'knowing' that they're the gold standard.

(Eg I'm actually trying to make sure I include female artists and BAME artists in the art lessons we teach)

Schools like to collect 'badges' or quality marks, Eg for health, sports, the arts, eco things, so if they choose to get a diversity stonewall type badge, their focus will be making their content reflect whatever stonewall or another organisation deem to be exemplary in that area. If they have a number of trans id pupils, they may do this, or indeed staff who are trans or very into these issues, the staff may decide to make this a focus.

There are so many holes and cooks in the kitchen, no one LEA or school or trust or academy group is the same anymore.

And they're all looking for external providers.

Fucking shit show.

Sorry being concise is not a strong point.

Thanks Neuro for all that it's really helpful, thank you, I'll be finding out more about my LEA/Schools now.

Absolutely a fucking shit show as you say.

Hate incidents when reported, will appear on a DBS check. Regardless of whether the person was guilty of it or not.

It still appears on a DBS check.

Is this correct?

langclegflavoredbananamush
This means that a new feature of the system makes it more likely that people who are likely to be concerned with proper Safeguarding are more likely to be excluded from places like schools and youth groups
That's a good point.

Maliciously reporting someone of a hate incident in order to keep people out of a group.
A parent raising safeguarding concerns is accused of transphobia, this reported to the police. It gets reported as a hate incident even if there is no evidence of a crime yet the concerned parent will have this on their DBS record.
This is punishing whistleblowers.

On the Trans guidance for schools link upthread

There is a list of books for children and yes 10,000 dresses is one of them.
Here's the link again, scroll to
page 27 for the whole list.
www.cornwall.gov.uk/media/13620644/schools-transgender_guidance_booklet-2015.pdf

Thanks to Uncompromisingwoman for the link.

Hate incidents when reported, will appear on a DBS check. Regardless of whether the person was guilty of it or not.
It still appears on a DBS check.

Yes, and the person has no recourse to have it removed. And the person who reports it doesn't have to be a "victim." I believe I saw a Mumsnetter mention that you have to pony up a fair bit of money to have a look at what your own DBS would say, but I'm hazy on that one.

I first heard about this from this tweet:

[https://twitter.com/WeAreFairCop/status/1214480876928667649]

If you haven't been following @WeAreFairCop 's judicial review case, in which Harry Miller was harassed by police for his GC tweets, this is one of the points they brought up.

Here's a fabulous interview about all this with Harry,

, which is discussed on another thread and is (sorry) derailing this one.

The judgement should come any time now!

But staying with Fair Cop and getting back on the rails, here's another great article from them about police getting involved in schools- to discourage children from expressing doubts about other (for example, a boy in a girl's locker room) student's gender identities.

www.faircop.org.uk/post/police-must-not-patrol-trans-discussion-in-schools

Here's the CPS information on the "LGBT+ Bullying and Hate Crime Schools Project pack," which frames girls asserting boundaries as transphobic bullying, and suggest that children who don't "affirm" trans identities are guilty of hate crimes.

Safeguarding fucking nightmare, from the people who get tax money to supposedly protect.

www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/lgbt-bullying-and-hate-crime-schools-pack-launched