Great article in Telegraph on the Susie Green exit

[JFDIYOLO]

t.co/yn5tZW178q

Really worth a look

With a charity, doesn't "governance" cover everything - not just financial matters but all ethical and regulatory concerns? so this - "by launching its highest level of statutory investigation “due to newly identified issues about the charity’s governance and management”" - the concerns could actually be about anything, including the safeguarding concerns that have troubled GC people in particular for a long time - not necessarily specifically money stuff?

On the other hand - I have a feeling that if you have concerns about an organisation with charitable remit, it may be that the easiest way to take it down is by looking for something dodgy with money, even if it's not the biggest problem. The regulatory landscape with charities is complex and demanding and Mermaids is an insanely fast-growing organisation of highly emotional people, who are absolutely bound to have made some mistakes. Financial irregularities are provable and matters of fact, not opinion or ideology. it might just be the easiest way to cut off their influence, or even existence

It’s like Catch 22 written by George Orwell

sums it up perfectly

More from the Telegraph…

archive.ph/5uNaY

Citing media reports and an “unacceptable risk” to the authors, Mat Maddocks, a Mermaids trustee, wrote in the email that “our first priority is the well-being of our staff and given these events it isn’t possible to create the safe spaces for processing the report that are vital”.

That bit made me laugh WandaWomblesaurus.

It's a case of be careful what you wish for.

the easiest way to take it down is by looking for something dodgy with money, even if it's not the biggest problem

Yes, remember the story that Al Capone eventually went to jail for tax evasion, not for his other alleged misdeeds.

This needs it's own thread - it's comedy gold.

This is a big chunk of the cahirity commission's announcement. It's clear that the context is the safeguarding questions, and I have highlighted the bits where I think the safeguarding problems could be addressed in the inquiry.

"The Commission opened a regulatory compliance case into the charity in September 2022 after safeguarding allegations were raised. It has now formalised its engagement by opening a statutory inquiry, due to newly identified issues about the charity’s governance and management.

The Commission will investigate the regulatory issues to determine whether they indicate serious systemic failing in the charity’s governance and management. The trustees have fully cooperated with the regulator’s case, but their response has not provided the necessary reassurance or satisfied the Commission at this stage.

The regulator will seek to determine whether the charity’s governance is appropriate in relation to the activities the charity carries out, which involve vulnerable children and young people, as well as their families.

The inquiry, which opened on 28 November 2022, will examine:

• The administration, governance and management of the charity by the trustees including its leadership and culture.

• Whether the trustees have complied with and fulfilled their duties and responsibilities as trustees under charity law; in particular whether they had sufficient oversight of the charity’s activities and compliance with its policies and procedures and in line with its charitable objects.

• Whether there has been any misconduct and/or mismanagement by the trustees."

The CC are not going to take a view on whether the things mermaids believe about gender are true. They are not going to find that providing breast binders is a safeguarding issue on itself (given the context of gender medicine) but might they look at whether the specific way they did it was safe, and how they dealt with complaints about it, what did the trustees know? Etc ?

I think all the issues will be looked at, but the question will be did the trustees follow the law in how they allowed or managed this thing? Rather than was this thing good or bad in itself?

In the helen webberly tribunal the fact she was working in an area where there are no established standards worked in her favour to some extent. That might be the case here as well. It's a changing scene - mermaids were creating the ways of supporting these children.

I also think the fact that amongst all this mermaids chose to commission an edi report, rather than a report into whether they are following the law or good practice in how to run a children's charity, won't go down well. If there are governance issues the fact that the governors were spending money & time on that rather than more nuts ams bolts things will add to the air of poor governance.

The telegraph article about 'safe space to read the the report' is funny. I think it's code for - 'how can we let you read it without it being leaked to the telegraph?' Which is probably a fair point.