NHS ‘gaslighting patients’ on female only wards

[IsitM]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/10/05/nhs-gaslighting-patients-trans-women-female-only-wards-nurse/

Whistle-blower says official policy documents compare patients who ask for single-sex spaces to racists and label them 'transphobes'

@ArabellaScott

in one mental health trust, a male-born patient who identified as a woman had sexually assaulted patients on a female-only ward on two separate admissions, despite staff raising concerns.

This is abhorrent. Unbelievable. But it never happens and never would or even could happen, right?

It gets worse than that, look at the first part of that case:

She added: “In one mental health trust, a male who identifies as a woman was placed on a female ward with observation. This patient complained that the observation was discriminatory, and it was removed.

So they knew that it was a risk, the man (because that's what he is, shoot me) threw a tantrum and the token safeguarding measure was removed.

Yep. It's crystal clear how this is working. It's abhorrent, did I say that? It's a fucking textbook case of how safeguarding is compromised by this creation of a sacred caste that can't be doubted/criticised/checked.

So much for 'risk assessment'. It is clear that 'risk assessment' is in itself seen as 'discriminatory'.

When I was in hospital (when I was a teen for minor op) I ended up in a small ward of women who were all in for gynaecological ops - which they discussed in great detail at length. Can you imagine a man on there (either hiding under the sheets - or more worryingly, getting his jollies?)

Yes and once observation was removed, he went on to sexually assault seriously ill women.

Who were probably told to at it never happened, because it couldn’t have happened.

@NiceGerbil

That response from stonewall says it all.

To hear all that and respond-

With nothing said at all about the women assaulted.
With a reiteration that TWAW and that's that.
With an idea about risk assessment but. Are there existing protocols for risk assessing female inpatients?
Options for women deemed to be a risk, assuming there is any risk assessment widely carried out (???) about what to do with them.
That the existing risk assessment (if any exist) for women. Was written with males in mind. Sexual assault, male build and strength, etc. Also what about the other stuff that women esp in bed in a nightie will find unsettling/ threatening? Staring, ogling, if mobile going for chats sitting on bed. Often a captive audience.
Hard on under covers?
Wanking loudly behind flimsy curtain?
I mean creeps have an unlimited imagination when it comes to this sort of thing.
Watching porn with volume up?
None of that illegal.

I was shocked by this too, NiceGerbil, but in a way am almost glad they made their misogyny so crystal clear - I don’t think anyone reading that quote from Stonewall can fail to notice the total lack of regard or concern for women in that statement, and it must get the message home to readers about who and what they are, probably more clearly than anything we could say about them. They are digging their own grave with statements like that.

This is also further proof (if any was needed) that these policies are effectively being written by Stonewall, rather than individual Trusts / safeguarding leads. Exactly the same statements were used in the Transgender policy for the mental health Trust I worked in, in a different part of the country. Rape victims with PTSD and psychotic disorders labelled transphobic and compared to racists for expressing fear about sharing an inpatient ward with males.

This is REALLY not a good look NHS.

They’ve missed out of the training that if a woman on the ward says she’s in pain, tell her to get over it, if a trans woman on the ward says she’s in pain she’ll get lots of pain killers and help.

Men are still believed and treated more over issues like pain. Woman just have anxiety.

Something I don't get is that we know that single-sex wards are what the general public want. The NHS know this too, otherwise they would just come out and say that wards are single-gender and that those males are women. Stonewall also know it, otherwise they would have said something other than that non-statement their spokesperson said.

(And on FWR, I think we're pretty well qualified in recognising when someone is having to skirt round language in order to try and say what they want to because they know they can't actually come out and say it. We do it all the time here!)

So why are some TRAs so insistent that 'nobody cares' who they share a space with? Is it just the right side of history bs again?

The whole of Dr Helyer’s speech was shocking and upsetting, and the section on the vulnerability of women patients affected by this especially distressing - but the part when she talked about some women psychiatric patients not even having recourse to the justice system in the event of an unwitnessed sexual assault if they’re deemed not competent actually made my head spin.

So a woman, very possibly already a survivor of sexual abuse, mentally ill enough to be sectioned, can find herself confined with a male sex offender, unable in any way to escape, and denied recourse to any kind of justice if he then assaults her.

This is not just the most profound abuse of her human rights, this is torture. Sanctioned, enabled and perpetrated by the NHS. We are in dire, dire straits.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

https://twitter.com/Baroness_Nichol/status/1445286919919783939

Link to meeting Melrose linked thread about. Dr Sinead starts at 35 minutes in. It's a moving and enraging speech.

Thanks for this link, Eresh

It's been going on for a long time.

mobile.twitter.com/hairyleggdharpy/status/1052296768115888128?lang=bg

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3396859-Weve-been-lied-to-about-Single-SEX-wards-since-2010

So why are some TRAs so insistent that 'nobody cares' who they share a space with? Is it just the right side of history bs again?

Because Denton was successful and organisational capture is complete with MSM reporting the perspective of solely one organisation.

No problem. It was clear both from Dr Helyer and Dr Coleman that women both in hospital and the female prison estate are both objecting to males in their spaces, and being punished for transphobia for doing so.

No idea why the twitter link is Bulgarian!

Are there existing protocols for risk assessing female inpatients?

I doubt it, or if there are it will be seriously limited because the NHS won't have access to all the information required to risk assess.

Sajid Javid needs to do something about this.

He claims to be on women's side in all of this - but he is in charge of the NHS. He needs to take responsibility.

@PronounssheRa

Are there existing protocols for risk assessing female inpatients?

I doubt it, or if there are it will be seriously limited because the NHS won't have access to all the information required to risk assess.

Quite. I doubt the risk assessment will be an actual risk assessment. If all the possible negative outcomes are pre-defined as being transphobic no-one is going to get close to evaluating how likely they are.

Agree. Efforts to engage with the Tories on the issue of hospitals, the NHS capture and mental health units should focus on him.

Dr Helyer also touched on the issue of hospitals not carrying out proper impact assessments on behalf of women. FOIs sent by MNers have shown up that many in the NHS don't understand the purpose of an Equality Impact Assessment or Public Sector Equality Duty, and that they need to examine how a proposed policy may impact all 9 EA protected characteristics and mitigate this, not just the one the policy is concerned with.

Mixed sex wards were already a longstanding NHS scandal!

Ditto that girls and women can’t request a female practitioner, even for intimate examinations/procedures.

I have a horror of hospitals/medical environments. Reading stuff like this just makes me even less likely to ever call 999 or see a GP .

Everyone knows the NHS is stretched; if staff were apologetic and explained a male in a female ward was a temporary situation due to a bed crisis, that's one thing. It's the shameless dishonesty of insisting it's still a female ward and that nobody should be making a fuss that's so insidious.

Everyone knows the NHS is stretched; if staff were apologetic and explained a male in a female ward was a temporary situation due to a bed crisis, that's one thing. It's the shameless dishonesty of insisting it's still a female ward and that nobody should be making a fuss that's so insidious.

YY, and also as mentioned in Dr Helyer's talk the idea that a male on a female mental health ward complained about being monitored because it was othering, and they dropped it and failed to safeguard the women in their care.

We need a clear commitment that people need to tell the truth. We need the restrictive privacy clauses taken out of the GRA so no one can hide behind that. Women have the right to be told they will be on a mixed sex ward.