Brighton and Hove council Trans Tool kit is likely illegal - Brighton family threatening legal action if not withdrawn

[LogicLoverLlama]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/13/schools-in-england-and-wales-using-gender-toolkit-risk-being-sued-by-parents

I live In Brighton. Both my kids are affected by this. I am not the one threatening legal action but I'll be adding my name to this brave families.

For the record my son was socially transitioned at school without my permission or knowledge (11) and my daughter shares changing spaces with a MTF trans child.

I suspect a new thread to cover how to do it would be best but, every parent who write to their school to get clarification on this, using these materials, is doing our children a massive service.

It's definitely worth sharing with schools. and I would say share the case against OCC because they withdrew the toolkit rather than face legal action. It's practically the same toolkit.

YY. There were other LAs who caved in this way due to challenge from people using your template ISTR, but I suspect Brighton will be the "final boss" of them and won't go easily.

Apologies meant to quote you @2fallsfromSSA

The CPS also pulled their appalling guidelines for schools rather than face a JR. It's wrong that we need legal cases to get these dangerous child gaslighting policies out of schools - safeguarding should be intrinsic for every local authority - but no longer as we keep seeing.

This. Please do cite these challenges when you approach your local authority. No one was prepared to defend these "toolkits" in court. Because they're awful.

Fantastic, thank you.

No problem! You ae right, many councils did withdraw following action from parents across the UK.

I have created a new thread with all the supporting information we need to write to our children's school to ensure they review their trans policies / trans toolkits inline with the Cass review and the legal review of the trans toolkit policy here

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5050647-cass-report-school-policies-write-to-your-childs-school-for-evidence-their-current-policies-and-practices-are-lawful-and-in-line-with-the-cass-report-links-starter-info

Please write to your child's school regardless of if they use the toolkit, the more conversations that are had the better

The final paragraph of the article is very chilling.

From the legal opinion:
3.3. The Toolkit barely addresses the position of girls and boys who do not
identify as trans and the impact upon them of trans inclusion.
3.4. The Toolkit does not address the position of pupils and members of staff
who hold particular religious or philosophical beliefs, including “gender
critical beliefs”.
...
206. The Toolkit barely touches upon safeguarding and where it does, the central and almost sole focus is on trans children.
207. There is no mention of the impact of trans inclusion on girls and the risk of sexual violence and harassment

Thank you Karon Monaghan KC. Why does it take 75 pages of Leading Counsel's opinion (not a cheap undertaking) to state the incredibly obvious.

Also, is there a gardening project for this, or has someone got deep pockets?

If anyone who has written to Brighton secondaries has received a response from the school on this, could they share it with me? via PM if they prefer? As a concerned parent of a secondary age child in Brighton would love to know what they say.

Yes, it's a failure of central government. In KCSIE it specifies safeguarding has primacy over GDPR. I.e. you can breach GDPR if needed for safeguarding a child.

We need something similar regarding EA 2010 as children ARE NOT MINI ADULTS! If they were they wouldn't be in school but out working, like in Victorian England!

(sorry, bit fed up about this).

What I will say is that parents have power, and for many schools (not all) it does not need to be combative. I'm a governor as well as a parent and my older child's school had a couple of trans activist teachers the first year. Teachers are stretched at all times, working long hours with insufficient resources and expected - increasingly - to pick up what should be social services work. To feed children who are hungry because their parents can't afford food. It's bloody hard being a teacher in a state school and activists can quite easily sneak things in without other overstretched staff noticing. In my DDs school, this had a very quick course correction once the HT was aware of what had happened via parents point it out.

In my experience MOST teachers really do want the best for children, they would be doing an easier job if they didn't. Unfortunately activist teachers have been able to run amok partly because schools are stretched and in the absence of a clear steer from government.

I do think it would be ideal to have a few high profile sackings of teachers who have breached safeguarding spectacularly, and government guidance needs to be statutory.

And the captured parts of the DBS service also need sacking - at the moment teachers will be scared not to capitulate for fear of getting DBS barred as Kevin Lister was.

Does anyone have an update on what’s happening with the Brighton case?

Sympathy and solidarity.

I had no idea about this. ND DGS is about to go to secondary school in September. To have to put up with this sxxt besides the general adaptation from primary to 'big' school is disgraceful and dangerous. DD is not sadly GC so I can't take up the issue with her as she no doubt thinks it's all fine. Is there any way of finding out which schools have taken on this 'toolkit'?