GOSH Capture *sigh*

[Distractable]

Saw this online today - Pride being celebrated at Great Ormond Street Hospital. By soliciting donations to Mermaids.

My first post on Mumsnet - but long time lurker appreciating the great wisdom here.

No one seems to ask people with severe disabilities if they feel they are born in the wrong body.

Oh they do.

I wrote a strong letter a couple of years ago to the Scots government about advice for teaching children with severe disabilities, including those who were pre verbal, about being born in the wrong body.

The advice was to present the child with many strictly gendered products and resources and clothes and music, first the ones that the writer's appalling stereotypical assumptions had labelled as 'girl' and then after a while you removed those and provided the ones the writer had labelled as 'boy' things. You observed their apparent likes, dislikes and preferences, while considering was the child f/m/nb by their reactions?

I inquired on the writer's educational qualifications, background and experience of specialised SEND education, plus qualifications and practical experience in neurological development and how this document fitted with any current practice, policy and research, since I was beyond shocked. They never answered, but I haven't seen this lunacy spoken of again so far thank goodness.

Although that probably means it was sneaked in under cover of something else, it usually does.

Victoria Beckham has just done a live Instagram featuring Jodie Harsh and collecting cash for - yes you guessed it Mermaids. She has a lot of followers

@CoffeeTeaChocolate I'd DM the OP first to find out if that was actually a GOSH endorsed poster. There are no logos as far as I can see. Might be someone on staff trying to get their colleagues to donate. Which I think GOSH also need to be made aware of, but that's a different conversation than challenging them on why they are officially supporting Mermaids.

I would just want to be clearer as to the origin of this to prepare before making contact.

@MrsNoah2020

Consider donating to another charity. Not because of Mermaids, but because GOSH is absolutely loaded. Many, many paediatric services are desperate for support, but don't get cash because they don't have GOSH's profile.

Complete agree - I have worked there & was shocked at what they wasted charity money on ( to be fair it also bought some amazing things ...other children's services would love to have a 1/4 of their donations)

Michelle - WTAF? What is wrong with these people? - it's obsessive. Pathological! They need to leave kids alone.

Wow. You can’t imagine a hospital encouraging kids to go through a lifetime of choice medication and surgery (and reversal).

@niceberg, good idea. I will do that.

Fucks sake. My stepdaughter’s gender Dysphoria seems to have been, in part, triggered by her little sister’s life threatening illness, something teen specialist therapist Sasha Ayad sees as an emerging pattern.

Anyone got a good contact name or email? Cannot be arsed with a PR minion on this one.

The RMCH charity is amazing, btw, and if they ever pulled this nonsense I would happily march right into their office and have a word!

Please don't stop giving GOSH money though - that would be wrong

This, doesn't sit right that people would stop giving money to a children's hospital just because they have recommended a couple of charities for Pride you disagree with.

It's weird because on the one hand Mermaids seems to be under more and more scrutiny, with their dodgy practices being dragged out into the sunlight. And then on the other hand you have bigger and bigger names promoting them at the moment?

I really do think that the idea of grown adults encouraging children down a route of chopping off healthy body parts and lifelong medication is abhorrent. I watched a bit of that Jodie Harsh VB live in Instagram and its all 'Mermaids is a great charity which allows trans kids to be celebrated blah blah blah'. What is 'celebratory' about mastectomies of healthy breasts, lifelong infertility and sexual dysfunction? In a body that was perfectly healthy?

doesn't sit right that people would stop giving money to a children's hospital just because they have recommended a couple of charities for Pride you disagree with.

That implies though that it's just a political difference I didn't agree with, as if they'd voted conservative or for Brexit. To me this isn't a political difference, it's an indicator of being associated with some beliefs and actions I have serious concerns about the rightness of for children, that I don't want to support or be involved with happening to children, or help to continue. And I get so tired of the human shield bit of 'don't take action about these big issues to protect children because the children'.

As said a few times on the thread, GOSH are loaded, and people are talking about funding children's health charities elsewhere, it's not tearing money out of needy children's hands. And yes, it is very important that charities realise, there are concerns here that not everyone will be willing to brush aside - because they care about what happens to children.

they have recommended a couple of charities for Pride you disagree with
My objection is to a paediatric hospital donating to a charity that pushes vulnerable children down a path leading to sterility, damage to healthy tissue and lifelong medicalisation, which also has the effect of ignoring those children's true underlying issues, like autism, csa, emerging homosexuality in a homophobic world, low self esteem, normal puberty distress of teenage girls, etc. They are a children's hospital FFS!

I don't believe GOSH actually backs all that but I do believe they may well have failed to do due diligence. If they can't be trusted to do due diligence on where they spend their money then I don't want them to have my money.

The big charities are managed by the same pool of people who all periodically swap jobs, it's a very incestuous group and no one who doesn't have the right beliefs and history will get the top jobs. They are very woke and many have odd beliefs, with limited awareness of safeguarding. A friend worked in one for a while liaising with others in the area and ended up leaving in despair at the culture, waste of money and idiocy going on in every one she worked with.

I worked for a couple of big charities and I can sadly attest to this. It's very much if your face fits you're in the gang.

Have the Newsnight reports completely passed them by?

I doubt it. Polly Carmichael is on their psychology team.

I experienced this too. I did a 6 month job with a charity. I did not renew. I ran away fast. It was depressing. I was not surprised when the sex abuse scandal broke.

My objection is to a paediatric hospital donating to a charity that pushes vulnerable children down a path

The OP and picture didn't say anything of the sort though, Great Ormond Street haven't donated to those charities (at least there's nothing in the screenshot that says they have!)
It literally says for Pride Month, here's a couple of charities you could maybe donate to.
It doesn't say they themselves have

Good point, made upthread too. I won't be stopping anything without confirmation.

They really should be having a quiet word with staff about Mermaids though.

I heard the Alder Hey charity is really struggling at the moment - a lot of their usual funding is through events, fun runs, marathons etc and obviously, everything is cancelled/postponed.

And Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital saved Little Du’s life (the night I should’ve been at the WNTT/Posie P event in MCR!) so there’s two options for anyone thinking about redirecting donations usually sent to GOSH 😘

Can I ask if the hospital champions any other social cause?

Are they asking for donations for charities helping black kids after BLM, kids in poverty, kids living with cancer, heart or kidney disease? What about mental health awareness month, do they ask for donations to kids mental health charities then?

Pride has definitely lost its message and is now a massive commercial and virtue signalling event.

As @niceberg says, I'm not sure this is an official GOSH thing. But GOSH staff are definitely promoting them.

@DuDuDuLangaLangaBingBong

I heard the Alder Hey charity is really struggling at the moment - a lot of their usual funding is through events, fun runs, marathons etc and obviously, everything is cancelled/postponed.

And Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital saved Little Du’s life (the night I should’ve been at the WNTT/Posie P event in MCR!) so there’s two options for anyone thinking about redirecting donations usually sent to GOSH 😘

That's a good idea. I have a dd to both GOSH and Alder Hey but if GOSH has enough by way of funds I might just divert their donation to Alder Hey.

The children's hospices are also usually in dire need of funding.

@Michelleoftheresistance is right - Stonewall already focus on children and young people with SEND.

The children's hospices are also usually in dire need of funding.

To anyone thinking of supporting a hospice, Derian House in Lancs is a fantastic children’s hospice and has looked after some of Little Du’s friends at the end of their lives (and supported their families too).

A couple of tiny charities that have contributed enormously to Little Du’s well-being are ‘Milly’s Smiles’ and ‘Pyjama Fairies‘. If you are looking to donate to poorly children but don’t want your donation to be used to pay for fancy CEOs or get swallowed up in running costs, please take a look at what they do.

www.derianhouse.co.uk/
www.millyssmiles.org/
www.pyjamafairies.org/

(Sorry/Not Sorry for the slight tangent, but if I have a specialism in the gender debate it’s the point where serious paediatric illness and adolescent onset gender dysphoria in natal girls collide!)

Milly’s Smiles and Pyjama Fairies are both founded and run by mothers of seriously ill children and Derian House was powered by the inspirational ‘Miss V’ for decades: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.lep.co.uk/news/people/honouring-founding-lady-derian-house-and-pioneer-nursing-margaret-vinten-who-died-week-666375%3famp

I have just seen a fundraiser on twitter by a teenager (in the US) who had a mastectomy at 15 and then later diagnosed with autism. She is now horrified with what she has done And realises that it was just wrong- and she wants reconstructive surgery (thank god it was ‘only’ a double mastectomy but who knows what damage the drugs have done).

I have no idea how the ‘healthcare’ system works in the US is how the original surgery was paid for - but how can anyone in the medical world (not private) support this?