I’m disappointed that in The Times article, Polly Carmichael is not mentioned, I wonder if she is in the ruling? Her evidence to the tribunal was quite bizarre.
Hannah Barnes has done a Twitter thread that briefly mentions her, so I think PC will feature in it.
From Twitter:
Sonia Appleby, child safeguarding lead for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, has been awarded £20,000 in damages, after employment tribunal rules she was subjected to ‘detriment’ after blowing the whistle on safeguarding concerns.
Sonia Appleby had raised concerns about safeguarding in the Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service, after a number of clinicians had been to see her with their worries on several occasions.
Together with Deb Ccohen we revealed on BBCNewsnight how GIDS staff told the Trust’s medical director, Dr Dinesh Sinha, that there had been an instruction from GIDS director Polly Carmichael not to take safeguarding cases to Mrs Appleby.
The Trust denied this allegation at the time of broadcast and during the course of the hearing. However, the judgement notes that when answering questions, ‘Dr Carmichael was often both verbose and imprecise’.
The tribunal panel believe there had been such an instruction:
"... there was a message being communicated to GIDS staff by Dr Carmichael , at the time of the Sinha review, that they should not take Safeguarding issues to the claimant… because she was hostile to GIDS.’
Furthermore, “It was clear from Dr Carmichael’s discussion after the event … that she did doubt the claimant’s good faith and neutrality in what GIDS were doing,” the judgement says.
The panel said Dr Sinha behaved in a 'judgemental and punitive' way towards Appleby, who questioned not just GIDS' record-keeping 'but the lack of rigour in the service model for making judgements about whether there was background abuse requiring consideration of Safeguarding'
Dr Sinha’s (Tavistock medical director) treatment of Mrs Appleby “can only be explained as materially influenced by her disclosures, which were viewed by him (and others) as unwarranted interference, overstepping her proper role,” the judgement says.
Commenting to the Times, the Tavistock Trust said: “The trust is disappointed by the Tribunal’s decision and is considering it carefully. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”
NB: The tribunal made no judgement on the treatments offered by GIDS, but rather the rights and wrongs of how Sonia Appleby had been treated.
twitter.com/hannahsbee/status/1434241564499451909