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

YG says implication Is that AS speaks to GIll Rusbridger in 2019. AS disagrees and says it shows that it was 2017

YG challenges AS that he claims things had been difficult for four years - back to 2015
AS: yes. Looking back it was ‘very challenging.’ Talking about risk related issues was v challenging. There was fear that it would be seen as transphobic and there was pressure from LGBT grps

Who wanted early medical intervention

YG: there’s no reference to that in your witness statement

AS: para 42 I’m talking about Gill Rusbridger

Would I be right in thinking this does not look like YG is on top of this?

Do we know who AS is?

SA - Anastassis Spiliadis (AS) witness for SA
EJG - employment judge Goodman
SA - Sonia Appleby
YG - Yvette Genn, counsel for Tavistock
AP - Anya Palmer, counsel for SA

@FindTheTruth

Hannah Barnes *@hannahsbee* · 32s THREAD: Day 2 - Sonia Appleby v Tavistock and Portman Trust Employment Tribunal

Technical problems but can now hear

Anastassis Spiliadis (AS) witness for SA

@PaleBlueMoonlight FYI

Ah Find you're quicker than me. Fab work BTW.

Hasn't someone just said they think YG isn't across all this? I hope it's that way round.

Thank you - not sure how I missed that

AS: recurring theme in his supervision with Garry Richardson was don’t go to social care because they won’t know what to do with cases involving gender identity

Say what now?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4271195-Gender-A-wider-lens-podcasts?noti=1#108221768

If anyone wants to find out a little more, Sue and Marcus Evans clinicians who both worked at GIDs, provide a lot of background on the case in this podcast.

AS said it had become political. Only later in 2018 were we told not to go to SA.

YG: from 2017 and GR being appointed GIDS safeguarding lead he was first point of call. AS agrees.

YG: can’t see that AS didn’t take any concerns to HR.
AS: “No. I did it directly with the medical director.”

Gill Rusbridger also advised me that a really good place to raise these concerns was in the review with the medical director.

YG: if it’s true - and I say it’s not - that these directives are being given you are not giving any opportunity for these concerns to be properly investigated through the proper channels.

AS disagrees. Says he was advised best place to raise concerns was in the review

YG says that is much later. Suggests he’s been talking to others who are dissatisfied for whatever reason.
AS disagrees. Says he’s also talking about clinicians still in the service

AS: recurring theme in his supervision with Garry Richardson was don’t go to social care because they won’t know what to do with cases involving gender identity

YG: your responsibility to refer anyway, as an experienced clinician.

AS: wasn’t experienced then, but Garry felt that social services wouldn’t know what to do. In my other jobs we would do this as standard practice
YG suggests it’s ‘completely untrue’ that GR would seek to dissuade from making a referral

Is this normal? Seems very aggressive handling of a witness.

YG: your responsibility to refer anyway, as an experienced clinician.

^AS: wasn’t experienced then, but Garry felt that social services wouldn’t know what to do. In my other jobs we would do this as standard practice
YG suggests it’s ‘completely untrue’ that GR would seek to dissuade from making a referral^

This is really upsetting. It must have been really awful for AS, as a junior clinician, to go to his ?clinical supervisor for advice about a child for whom he has safeguarding concerns, only to be told that he shouldn't make a Safeguarding referral because Social services won't know what to do.

And that's before we even get to the harm that could have been caused to a child by failing to refer.

It's clearly indefensible if that is what happened, because YG is just saying he is lying.

AS confirms he was not managed by Polly Carmichael (PC). But says he did have formal one-to-one meetings with her on difficult cases and clinical matters. She had an ‘open door’ policy and would be available.

AS agrees that PC would be available and we were able to contact her

YG: seeks to confirm that PC was not final arbiter of complaints?
AS disagrees. PC would have final call on complaints and wishes to change clinicians or on requests for medical intervention.

YG suggests engagements with PC were not that frequent. AS says it was frequent. We would meet and greet almost every time we were both in. Discussions about clinical matters were not as frequent

YG suggests to AS that such knowledge he think he has only PC’s view of SA was garnered from other people - ‘hearsay’

AS: I’m referring to things I heard first hand and in the big team meeting with Polly

YG suggests he was often absent from team meetings

AS says not correct. Period he was working at other CAMHS service and was excused by Polly from one team meeting per month.
YG says various trust witnesses say you were more often than not on missing list, so you weren’t privy to what was said

As: even if I was absent at times, which is not my recollection, I’m talking about instances I was present and Polly was talking about Sonia directly

@thirdfiddle

Is this normal? Seems very aggressive handling of a witness.

It does, doesn't it?

YG - if that were true, suggest you would have taken that to someone else to talk to. ‘You don’t seem backwards in coming forwards’

In late 2018 I did go to multiple fora and raised it when something was said about Sonia. Initially I discussed with colleagues in GIDS to clarify what we had all heard, and then I did raise it in appropriate channels

YG - there’s no evidence of you doing that. And going to put to you that PC never said to you don’t go to SA

AS: That’s wrong. I did take it to DR Sinha. I spoke to Gill Rusbridger who also confirmed that I was not only one who had gone to her and raised concerns about Polly and safeguarding. That was a ‘surprise’ to hear

I thought that too, but I suspect (I hope) there is some context missing due to the limitations of live tweeting.

YG suggests most of what AS is saying is based on third hand accounts.
AS says wrong. Most people worked part time. Inc PC. Important to say that things continued to escalate in terms of safeguarding even after review in Jan 2019, all the time until I left in October 2019

YG - you’ve said repeatedly that you’d go to Rob Senior
As - yes there was unwritten rule to go to RS if you needed to go outside GIDS with safeguarding issues, not Sonia

YG - wasn’t a rule it was just that he was deemed to have a good knowledge of the service

AS - I’m not sure

YG quotes from AS statement as saying discouraged to speak to the ‘safeguarding team’. YG suggests this is ‘manifestly wrong’ as could go to Rob Senior

YG quotes from AS witness statement saying there was caution about going to safeguarding team, especially Sonia
AS - PC clearly said “I don’t know what her (SA) deal is with GIDS” and what her agenda is with GIDS. Other senior team members nodded in agreement with polly

YG suggests this isn’t true

AS says this was related by Polly also in one to one conversations including to talking to me on my mobile phone. “She does not know what Sonia Appleby’s problem was with GIDS”. AS says Sonia had questioned why a case wasn’t referred. Para 26.

YG: that suggests you’ve done exactly what you’ve said you’re not allowed to do.
AS: that’s incorrect. Sonia was reviewing cases and enquiring why cases involving emotional abuse by mother and suspected FII had not been referred.

YG - you will heartfelt PC she was concerned about the case but not about SA’s involvement
AS - thats the first time I’ve heard this. From my experience PC did not seem concerned about the case.

hear that not ‘heartfelt’ - typo

AS: I disagree with what you are saying about Polly. “It’s not my recollection that Polly was concerned about this case.

YG suggests again that AS’s evidence is not based on first hand experience.

‘There are quite a number of layers’ and you don’t have direct knowledge of this
AS: I have direct experience “I was in the team meeting when Polly explicitly told us not to go to Sonia in late 2018”

AS says he’d never met Sonia and had only spoken to her on phone

YG suggests that AS was not present at December 2018 meeting and there was no instruction.
Says conversations with Polly didn’t happen.

I am quite shocked that the GIDS lawyer is basically accusing this witness of lying. Repeatedly.

YG - although we disagree about there being an agenda with Sonia appleby, as a senior clinician you should and could have gone to her at any time

AS - Polly didn’t clarify what she thought Sonia’s agenda was. So it did take me a few weeks to process that information and take it to Gill and Dr Sinha.

YG - I’m confused. You suggest you have excellent relationship w. PC, if true it’s very serious, and yet at no point do you say to PC I don’t know what you mean

AS - as a person I had no issue with Polly. These were clinical issues. But I already started feeling quite attacked by Polly because she said I was part of a ‘gang’ of clinicians and had spoke to David Bell and press. Yes, I didn’t consult her but the trust that we had had gone

YG - This is just untrue. There’s nothing in your statement that stays PC said these very troubling things to you. If it were true, you would have raised a formal complaint.