Social work and trans identifying teens

[concernsocialworkstudent]

I'm currently on a fast track, post grad social work programme and have just finished a 5 week summer institute ahead of starting placement in September.

We had a lecture with LGBT+ anti abuse charity, Galop, last week and I am quite concerned by some of the teaching. There was a Q&A at the end of the session, and one of the participants asked a (very valid imo) question around balancing sensitivity towards trans identifying older children and the need to be aware that ROGD can be an indicator of child sexual abuse.

The guest lecturer from the charity completely shut the question down with a very swift response, something along the lines of "That's completely incorrect and not a known sign of child sexual abuse"

I was surprised at this and very concerned that this was deemed acceptable information to give to 450+ trainee social workers, most of whom are very young/straight out of undergrad. Basically being told, affirm the identity without question and ignore any concerns that there is anything more going on than #transjoy.

@AlisonDonut sorry repeating others. I've just ordered Time to Think

I noticed this. There was a not-inconsiderate degree of tongue biting done by yours-truly during workshops.
I raised a question in one workshop as to why all the case scenerios involving trans identifying/NB children had their gender identity and pronouns but not their biological sex...

It's not just around trans issues. It's much wider.

It's about crime, mental health, race ... anything. The evidence does not matter as much as doing good social justice work.

Hi changed my username but a regular poster. I’m a CG SW and a Practice Educator. The Uni I have students through is supposedly one of the best courses in the country. It is completely captured. One of my recent students went on and on about how by working with a non binary teen she had met the anti discriminatory practice PCF. This worries me significantly as by such focus on gender ideology the need to really understand the impact of sex, race, religion, disability and poverty on the people we work with we discriminate. Gender means fuck all for the people we work with. Sex does.

I have also worked with some trans men (in reality teenage girls) who have experienced the most horrific sexual abuse. But we’re not allowed to suggest any analysis on why a girl who’s been sexually abused may choose to identify as a man, to try to identify out of the sex that made them vulnerable to abuse by men.

I find the lack of reflection and analysis by social workers around this issue bloody depressing.

And the day I’m forced to state my fucking pronouns is the day I say fuck you to social work. And trust me it needs me more than I need it.

Ordering Time to Think now

Sorry that turned into a rant.

Good luck with your training. I love social work, love the people I work with and feel utterly privileged to work with the children and families I do.

Don’t be disheartened there are GC SWs walking among you and we’re keeping our powder dry for when this sorry mess begins to fall down.

This is exactly it. 100%
Thank you so much for sharing.

What a fab thread - it's a little microcosm of how women are fighting this regressive and harmful ideology that's undermining the safety of children everywhere. We have to be smart & strategic - but in the end we will prevail because the sterilisation and bodily modification of children to suit a lie must not continue.

@concernsocialworkstudent you could provide feedback in a constructive way e.g. a participant asked about balancing sensitivity towards trans identifying older children and the need to be aware that ROGD can be an indicator of child sexual abuse.

The guest lecturer from the charity replied “That's completely incorrect and not a known sign of child sexual abuse"

It would have been really helpful if the guest lecturer could have provided more detail about the studies and evidence that supported their definitive statement. For example xx study/evidence indicates …. and it would have been useful to discuss why this evidence is not valid.

Agree...but to refute with such certainty, positioning herself as an absolute authority, was reckless and dangerous.

Yes I agree.

@Sisterpita sensible suggestions.

As students requesting the original source of such claims shows diligence in your studies.

What is the evidence?

It is worth mentioning that in the past (1980's?) PIE were invited to speak to social work students, at some institutions.

@Dumbo12 can you provide a source please?

Only anecdotal from a SW lecturer in the 1990's.

You may also be aware that the group representing children of transpeople (Cots) have also got a website. They have raised concerns children are not always protected from harm by social workers where offending parents say they are trans.
https://childrenoftransitioners.org/2021/09/25/not-shutting-up/
There is also info on the EBSWA website of how conversion therapy bans for transpeople may interfere with social workers trying to protect CoT children (eg challenging dads wearing fetish clothing showing male genitalia or watching porn in front of CoT children) and Cots have raised concerns that sexual / emotional abuse of children like them is being ignored https://childrenoftransitioners.org/2023/07/15/six-children/)

I've recently listened to the audiobook of "Time to Think" and it talks a lot about this kind of thing.

One thing that struck me about it was near the end, there were some comments from a man who wasn't particularly critical of GIDS but out of his own cases (100+) he had only referred a couple for blockers. He seemed a bit incurious about whether other clinicians were being as cautious as he was. But what I found interesting was that somehow he hadn't felt the pressure to be more affirmative.

I don't know if it is that female clinicians are more likely to be/feel pressured into going along with the affirmation = kindness narrative, whether he happened to be trained by one of the more sensible cautious senior clinicians, whether his patients /their parents would question his judgement less (so he wasn't over ridden by patients switching to someone who would given them blockers) or whether he was just quite insular. He also hadn't worked there for as long so maybe he would have started to question whether other clinicians were referring young people that he wasn't, or started to see things weren't changing for the better and become more critical over time.

I was just wondering whether there are ways to work ethically within a captured framework or whether it was only possible at GIDS Tavistock because there was so much variation and it wasn't standardised. They seemed to just do their own thing for better or worse.

I had to attend a similar session at work - when asked about side effects of puberty blockers the response was 'all drugs have side effects'. None of the 15 medically trained doctors I was sat with raised any concerns. People are scared to speak.

You might want to watch some videos by Lisa Muggeridge, especially the social work one...

@AlisonDonut this is such an important video.

I despair that the lessons from history (recent and past) are being ignored and dismissed (deliberately) with the smoke screen of inclusivity.

Those championing certain groups and targeting those with CG views are either very naive or very dangerous. Or both.

She released that what was it 4 years ago?

Lessons are never learnt. Look how quickly they have crumbled under this ideology.

Not sure if anyone came back to this with a source but it is in Hannah Barnes' book, Time to Think. Chapter 15. She compares the number of children on a particular clinician's caseload who have a registered sex offender as a parent with an estimation of the rate of sex offenders as a whole. The stat is legit although as with all stats, will have it's limitations.

I think the reference is to an interview with Kirsty Entwistle about her work at GIDS in Time to Think? I haven't followed the footnote but will do

Quote here

"The work felt ‘unethical’ to Entwistle. She says she wasn’t the only one who felt this way either. The young people presenting to the service had such complicated backgrounds that it was ‘impossible’ to carry out an adequate assessment in this time. ‘Even though as a new starter I was meant to be taking on low- to medium-complexity cases I would say that the vast majority of children on my caseload had had traumatic experiences.’12 Entwistle’s caseload included children with parents who’d been long-term psychiatric patients, families where the mother had accused the father of rape, a number of children who had only ‘minimal verbal communication skills’, and ‘many’ who had witnessed domestic violence. Three per cent were families where a parent was a registered sex offender. ‘That seems above average,’ she reasons. ‘So that needs to be audited. Does everybody have… sex-offending parents on their caseload?’13

To put that figure into some context, in 2018 there were 58,637 registered sex offenders in England and Wales, the vast majority of whom are male.14 The total male population aged 18 to 65 was more than 18 million.15 That gives a male adult offending rate of 0.3 per cent – less than ten times that seen in this snapshot of GIDS families. It’s not a perfect comparison by any means, but one would not expect to see this rate in Entwistle’s caseload. The reaction in the GIDS Leeds team to Entwistle’s letter is interesting. ‘At first I thought, “Wow, that’s brave. Credit to her,”’ one former colleague told me, before explaining a sudden..."

SW training is basically just get through whatever the lecturers are uncritically presenting and learn to do the job on the job. Most of them haven’t been in practice in years/decades (sometimes not at all), and what they mean by critical thinking is not what the rest of the world means by it. I learnt this the hard way…

Sounds like some training I had as a teacher. They wouldn't even counter if, just shut it down.

I’m a NQSW but long in the tooth - 20 years prior experience with children in care. I’m working with teens and I think around 10%, probably more, of the total number my team work with identify as trans.

I tried to speak to my manager very cautiously about this, just testing the waters, about affirmation being potentially harmful. I mentioned the Cass Review and detransitioners. Manager has been in SW at least 20 years, v experienced, basically shut me down - we don’t question their identity. Since then I’ve seen the local authority policy - it’s fully affirming and anyone can use whatever toilet they want etc.

I’ll be emailing sex matters for advice when I get some time.

One colleague was talking about ‘educating’ a teen’s relative about accepting their gender identity.

This (ideology) did not come up at all on my MA. (Thank god!) - my course was excellent and very focused on encouraging critical thinking and being responsible for our own professional integrity.

I’m on probation period so not able to be fully outspoken about my GC beliefs but am gently questioning and hopefully sowing seeds. I’m only just picking up one trans identified teen on my case load so I’ll see where that takes me.

@concernsocialworkstudent I’ve emailed EBSwA a few times but haven’t had a response to my last email a couple of months ago. GETA are very helpful and the Gender A Wider Lens podcast is excellent.

Ive started a blog too, to try and put all the info I’ve learned into one place in bite size articles. Each one takes me so long though so there’s not much on there yet.

I’d love feedback from any of you fellow social workers, and anyone really!

https://gendercriticalsocialworker.substack.com/

Hi All,

I'm another mature NQSW (due to start my first role in November).

My MA experience (RG Uni) was that lecturers were all fully paid up TRA's. Rainbow lanyards, pronouns on emails and waxing lyrical the "most oppressed" narrative and "expert in their own lives" at every opportunity.

As another posters mentioned, most haven't been practicing SW's in over a decade.

LGBTQ+ training was outsourced and pretty much what you would expect - it was like playing bingo, right down to to citing "Stonewall law" re: the "Equalities" Act (always a dead giveaway, no its the bloody Equality Act and gender identity being a protected characteristic, no it is not).

The positive news is that the vast majority of students simply didn't buy it. It's not a good look if you can't cite relevant legislation correctly to a group of post grads and leads to questioning the rest of your claims.

However, as the OP experienced they (and the lecturers) closed down any questioning pretty damn quickly - something that was in so much contrast to other subjects it was a red flag in itself and very much noted.

I'd say on my course all the mature students were GC and even the majority of students who came straight from undergrad studies had concerns about TRA demands in relation to safeguarding/conflicts with women's rights. Though we did have a couple of fervent NB's on the course (who if anything served only to peak people rather than the reverse).

On placement the SW's I was close to were all GC and following Rachel Meade's situation very closely.

As to my new role, well we will have to see. Being on probation doesn't lend itself well to sticking your head over the parapet so the plan is very much to get through ASYE first before making waves - though based on a few comments I suspect my manager is GC - but l will be treading carefully until I know for sure.