GIDS being sued by their safeguarding lead.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

(Text from their crowdfunder)

My Details

My name is Sonia Appleby. I am a qualified social worker (1981); adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist (I992); MSc. in health psychology, (research) and MBA. I have a long career safeguarding and protecting children in social care, health and as a children’s guardian in public and private proceedings.

I am currently the Named Professional for Safeguarding Children and the Safeguarding Children Lead at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. I am therefore still employed by the Trust against which I am bringing my claim.

What is Safeguarding?

In all NHS trusts and organisations there are professionals such as myself, who work with other internal departments and external agencies to ensure there are 'root and branch' systems to keep patients and service users safe. This means responding to patient/service users' personal experiences, also including their environmental, familial, community/peer circumstances and sometimes any of the aforementioned domains could require the intervention of other professionals in different agencies. Safeguarding children and young people also concerns ensuring there is a sufficiently, healthy culture that does not unwittingly contribute to potential harm regarding the people who use and deliver NHS services.

Safeguarding within the Trust

My primary task is to ensure that clinicians protect their patients/service users from avoidable harm and are also able to recognize and appropriately respond to situations where under 18s are in need of safeguarding. My secondary task is challenge practices which are either harmful or could lead to harm. The Trust is commissioned by NHS England to deliver a National Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), which provides services for children and adolescents diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The treatments available also include "puberty blockers".

I have sought to ensure the principle of ''safeguarding children and young people'' is upheld whilst service users are being assessed and treated within the GIDS service.

My Claim

I lodged a whistle-blowing claim in November 2019 at the Central London Employment Tribunal. Since then I have made 2 applications to amend my claim as new information came to light.

In my claim, I allege that because I made "protected disclosures" to my line manager regarding concerns raised by GIDS staff ( that the health or safety of patients was being, had been or was likely to be endangered), I was subjected to detriments.

I allege these detriments are:

i) the Tavistock misused it's own procedures to besmirch me and therefore jeopardize the role of safeguarding within the Trust;

ii) there was an unwritten but mandated directive from the Tavistock management that safeguarding concerns should not be brought to my attention despite being the Trust Safeguarding Children Lead;

iii) and, clinicians were discouraged from reporting safeguarding concerns to me.

I also allege various other detriments.

Further to disclosures made to Newsnight by former staff, BBC Newsnight produced a programme focusing on the allegation that the Trust did not want to report any concerns to me. www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51806962

and you can watch it here

@TurquoiseBaubles

I don't know if I'm reading this right, but it seems to me that they are simultaneously saying there was no safeguarding issue, and that SA should have been doing more to sort out the safeguarding issue.

It's very odd, the implication that she didn't do enough to sort out a problem that wasn't there

I think they are trying to convey that there is one of two possible shortcomings on Sonia's behalf - (i) it was a big issue and she didn't do enough or (ii) it wasn't a big issue so she is over reacting.

I guess this is the defences narrative and they are covering two bases.

I assume they would prefer the over reacting but either way, both arguments aim to undermine Sonia

Thanks for all the updates Melroses and others who have contributed. This is fascinating to read but not that easy to follow.

SA says nothing she did was with the intention of causing harm to Polly Carmichael

YG cites an email from PC to rob senior in Jan 2018 - “you can see there, she is blind sided isn’t she?”
SA - I can see that she is not best pleased
YG - she’s blindsided because she’s not given any information

@TurquoiseBaubles

I don't know if I'm reading this right, but it seems to me that they are simultaneously saying there was no safeguarding issue, and that SA should have been doing more to sort out the safeguarding issue.

It's very odd, the implication that she didn't do enough to sort out a problem that wasn't there

Schrödinger's safeguarding

@OvaHere

Thanks for all the updates Melroses and others who have contributed. This is fascinating to read but not that easy to follow.

No worries - pleased to be able to pick up the baton.

I found it really confusing yesterday but some of the things covered today have started to make better sense of what has already been said.

Hopefully, today will make more sense when we have other witnesses.

Also, we do not know what the written papers say.

Hopefully HannahsBee will be able to enlighten us when it is over.

@RedDogsBeg

Blame shifting - it can't have been that bad or you would have done something else, if it was that bad why didn't you do more, it's all your fault.

I am also wtf about PC crying in the meeting, what the hell? Totally inappropriate response from a professional in her position, ridiculous

Wrt PC crying, a few thoughts come to mind:

The Tavi have tried to please everyone that has been pressuring them. They now have new people pressuring them and the points of pressure are incompatible.

Mermaids and TRAs have heaped pressure on them and they have been meeting some demands which must cause discomfort. Now people are sitting up and holding them to account, that discomfort is hard to tolerate and the decisions nigh on impossible to defend - accusations of transphobia are the first line of defence and when this fails tears are inevitable.

Nose back to the grindstone

G says Bernadette Wren (member of GIDS exec) also does not know about safeguarding concerns

SA - dr wren does actually suggest that she was aware that I had spoken to rob senior about the concerns. I am disappointed if dr Senior failed to avail dr Carmichael on some of the factual details of this matter - that I had gone to him and was awaiting a response

It’s challenging now because it was in the past

YG - para 30 of your witness statement. Why do you challenge the description of GIDS as a highly specialist service?

SA - I’m essentially saying that portraying as a highly specialised service without acknowledging that the service is riven with challenges from staff ...

If you have a staff group working with complex patients… but if that service is undermined by staff saying they’re too afraid to speak up, too afraid to use professional curiosity…and that some staff feel - and I’m not saying everyone experiences this…

…they have said you’re in danger of being called a transphobe if you’re perceived about being Curious about what the service is doing, even though I’m sure all staff members want to do their very best

I’m not disputing that this is a specialist service, and the work is complex. “But that work is made even more complicated by the complexities of the culture within the service”…

on the one hand we have children w complex needs and on the other we have some members of staff who have had serious problems in the service, and I don’t think these are deviant misfits. And they have struggled …in a service with serious splits.

…GIDS clinicians have some of the highest caseloads in the trust. They work incredibly hard.

SA - I think it’s unfortunate you are implying i don’t recognise the diversity in GIDS service, Dr Spiliadis indicated he was denigrated because of his diversity

YG - but at the same time as some are saying they’re being called transphobes, there are others who say they’ve experienced homophobia?
SA - I agree

SA - I myself Became known as a transphobe… anyone who accesses an NHS service needs a safe service.

SA I understand in one of the redacted transcripts in Dr Sinha’s review that I was referred to as a transphobe

YG - what you were doing was adding to splits already in the service. Your role in this was very partial - not impartial…

sa - I strongly reject that. “I know that I was bringing uncomfortable news to GIDS.” I respect their work but I do object to the name calling in this way and it’s something others have cited. And I do hope it’s something that can be put right.

SA - “I am not against the GIDS service. I never have been and I am very supportive of those who have the challenges that many of their clients have. I think anyone whether they be transgender or gender dysphoria… deserves a safe service.”

Sonia A comes across as calm, compassionate, and completely professional. Very impressive under hostile questioning.

HB - apologies. Couldn’t use hands. There has been a back and forth with YG suggesting SA being disingenuous and SA rejecting this. Very similar to earlier questioning)

YG questioning SA about first meeting between her and GR in March 2018

YG - Curiosity is we’ve got your evidence that there were concerns and yet there’s no action. There wasn’t any will on your part to help GIDS make the progress you want them to be making
SA - I’ve said this before. I had several restraints on my availability …

I was due to see Garry in May. I saw him in June, July, August where we had specific things to discuss.

END OF EVIDENCE TODAY

@GrinitchSpinach

Sonia A comes across as calm, compassionate, and completely professional. Very impressive under hostile questioning.

Agreed. She's doing a brilliant job. I'm not sure what the other side are doing though. I appreciate we're not getting a full transcript but so far all it seems to be is several different versions of 'you're lying'.

Hello, social worker sticking my head up. Social workers get cross examined in court in family proceedings, it's part of our job. I wouldn't expect her to be anything other than brilliant 😊

@walkingthedog1

Hello, social worker sticking my head up. Social workers get cross examined in court in family proceedings, it's part of our job. I wouldn't expect her to be anything other than brilliant 😊

VG point, hadn't thought of that.

I've spent all day reading this thread. Thank you so much for the tweets.

I think they might be trying to persuade the court that SA wasn't really worried about safeguarding issues at the time by saying that she would have done more had she been worried. And if she wasnt really worried back then, then that shows the claims about safeguarding concerns are retrospectively invented to back up her current claim that she was being sidelined for raising safeguarding concerns. So it is shroedingers safeguarding but directed at Sonia. I don't know and I hope it's not wrong to speculate about what they are trying to show.

Whatever it is Sonia is very calm and confident from the tweeting, and comes across to me as sure that she did the right thing. Not defensive. But I'm not neutral.

Thanks to those posting here.

Also well done again to hannah Barnes. I might be wrong but I suspect she's also caring for a child at the same time. She said she wld take breaks for child care, and at one point she comes back saying sorry I couldn't use my hands.

Anyway. Thanks busy women of the Internet!

Sonia did seem very calm. Don't know anything about ETs but it does seem the strategy of the Tavi's lawyer is to discredit Sonia.

My understanding is that she is still employed in her role. She must be a very brave woman to carry on with her job whilst her employer's representives are taking this hostile approach.

I wonder if Dr Polly C will give evidence.

So SA was approached by GIDS clinicians with safeguarding issues. I would assume that the clinicians tried to raise the issues with Gids safeguarding and PC. SA became increasingly uneasy, talked it through with her manger who said they'd talk to PCs manager. SAs manager didn't get back to SA on how to proceed, SA follows up. Someone else contacts SA, while waiting for her manager to update her she decides to contact PCs manager directly. PCs manager tells SA to talk to PC. PC feels attacked out of the blue by SA. Meanwhile there's evidence that Bernadette Wren had spoken about the issues with SAs manager.

The senior managers sound like they don't know what to do, SA ends up talking to PC. PC should have had these issues raised to her by her manager or Bernadette Wren.

@walkingthedog1

Hello, social worker sticking my head up. Social workers get cross examined in court in family proceedings, it's part of our job. I wouldn't expect her to be anything other than brilliant 😊

Good point.

Out of interest is there much talk about this case or the topic as whole in social work circles?

I've seen few dip a toe in the water recently on twitter and elsewhere but it feels like a group we haven't heard a lot from compared to clinicians, psychologists etc...

Do you think Sonia Appleby's case will change that?

Ovahere if you haven't already seen it there is a group of anon social workers called 'evidence based social work alliance'. They have had some success in opening up dialogue with the various professional bodies.

@Manderleyagain

Ovahere if you haven't already seen it there is a group of anon social workers called 'evidence based social work alliance'. They have had some success in opening up dialogue with the various professional bodies.

Ooh interesting thanks. I hadn't heard of them.

@Manderleyagain

Ovahere if you haven't already seen it there is a group of anon social workers called 'evidence based social work alliance'. They have had some success in opening up dialogue with the various professional bodies.

I see from Twitter that they are looking for social workers to support a gender critical motion at being proposed at the AGM of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) - details here: twitter.com/ebswa/status/1404435081436053516

Thanks for keeping us informed.

So far the only paper taking an interest seems to be the DM.