Schools referred 160 children directly to GIDS

[impossibletoday]

More than 30 were under 10

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/17/children-gender-schools-clinic-young-referrals-foi-cass/

https://archive.is/8G35z

FFS, but thanks for posting

Thank you.
I wonder if there's a breakdown of those numbers anywhere. It would be interesting to see how many children were being referred by the same school etc

As one of the comments points out - that means there are names of education staff who stepped outside their professional role and got involved in sex change for children. That should make it easier for the countless children detransitioning as young adults to identify the dangerous trusted adults who failed to safeguard them when they start to sue the organisations who failed them.

I recall that there was an excessive number of referrals from the Blackpool area? I think the fear was that as transactivists had openly targeted children in care / foster care and alienated from their families at an early stage with all this, we were seeing the results as there were a number of children's homes in that area?

Fucking hell, that's terrifying 😳

Am trying to take a short break from online conversations (still reading MN to catch up on what's happening though 😁) but I couldn't resist adding a comment on this one:

I'm glad to see the newly forming opposition speaking up. Labour needs its feet holding to the fire on this. The school to gender clinic pipeline is a huge risk to vulnerable children. The Tories were in government for so long that we're not yet fully aware of how they'll operate in opposition. I hope this is a stake in the ground. This issue should be non-partisan but Bridget Phillipson seems to be slipping backwards on the progress that has already been made by the previous government. Damian Hinds is untested in this arena, other than signing off the problematic trans-affirming KCSIE guidance in his first couple of months as (the now ex) Secretary of State for schools. Hopefully he's had or is having an awakening WTT how this links to the GIDS pathway and she is going to meet her match here 🤞🤞

In the news this week has been the story about compensation, including haemophiliac children who were given experimental treatment in their school without proper oversight or parental consent. Sound familiar?

Is the real issue with GIDS policy of affirmation as default? If GIDS had done a better job of delivering neutral, holistic, evidence based care, then referring a child experiencing gender distress to them would seem at face value to be a responsible thing for a school to do?

Would a school do this with any similar condition, for example anorexia? There's the assertion that 'being trans' is not a mental health condition so that might screw up a school's response. They often default to treating the parents of gender confused kids as, I assume, they treat parents of abused kids often including involving social services.

Typo correction:

*WRT how this links to the GIDS pathway...

It's outside a school's expertise to decide which pathway a mentally vulnerable child should be placed on. Schools refer to CAMHS who have the expertise to diagnose and make those decisions.
Inviting schools to directly refer to such a niche service implies that they have the knowledge and skills to diagnose - which is patently untrue.
Children have been surrounded by legions of useful idiots who have unthinkingly swallowed the transactivist line ending up gaslighting children, telling untruths about sex and gender, frightening parents using ignorant tropes about "better a live son than a dead daughter" and creating the pipeline from schools to gender clinics.

It needs to stop.

But surely they just did what they were told to do?

Schools paid the 'professionals' to do their CPD and those 'professionals' told the staff to make referrals.

This comes from the transcript of Jelly Babies Jan's training.

Now they will discuss referrals from health workers, social services, teachers, police officers, LGBT youth workers and mermaids, so if you were supporting a family, if the parents were on board, you could actually do the referral and bypass any of that. So if the young person has got really good mental and physical health, they just want help with their gender identity, then you can either download the form from the Tavistock website or from the Mermaids website and you can do the referral.

Anybody else have an idle interest in any potential crossover of any high referring schools and schools that competed for gold, silver or bronze status with Educate and Celebrate?

Agreed, it's a society wide issue. How did we allow a tiny group of mainly middle aged men to rewrite medical ethics, child safeguarding and the law in favour of their preferred gender ideology? Why did all the professionals fail to speak out when it should have been evident from the outset that no child is born in the wrong body?
It is a horrifying example of how easy it is for a dangerous ideology to use underhand techniques, intimidation and bullying to overturn the social contract and do direct harm to so many - especially children.
How many times do we hear "I was just doing what I was told" as people try to defend the indefensible?

Records should be kept for 100 years for the purposes of historic abuse, which many would now see this as.

No it's extremely unusual for teachers to be making direct referrals to a service such as this.

But surely they just did what they were told to do?

This is the nub of it; since when did external charities become the ones to exert so much influence on school staff?

What a terrible thing it is to realise that schools cannot be trusted to act in a child's best interests.

It is. When you add to that many doctors, lawyers, politicians, celebrities, psychologists, even social workers and child protection experts it becomes almost unthinkable.

All these powerful people needing to walk over that golden bridge and centre children again instead of transactivists.

All these powerful people needing to walk over that golden bridge and centre children again instead of transactivists.

Yep.

I'll be keeping my fingers firmly crossed that there is lots of public noise about the forthcoming Paralympics women's race where a transwoman is competing.

The recent boxing debacle led to several previously quiet people in the public eye stepping forward to speak. Nicola Adams, Mark Foster and Matthew Pinsent spring immediately to mind, but perhaps more importantly, the conversation was being held by the general public too. Obviously the boxers weren't trans(-identified), but there were plenty of transwomen interviewed on TV and radio to sufficiently conflate DSD with trans identities. Hopefully the conversation will continue with the Paralympics 🤞🤞 and more people will realise that they can say what they really think. Even if what they really think is that they are simply confused.

Obviously some people will continue to genuinely believe that we all have a gender identity but hopefully those that don't, or those that (now?) feel agnostic/unsure, will feel confident to speak up.... or at the very least, will start to shuffle themselves towards the golden bridge when they begin to realise that they don't feel as confident as that previously did about what they've been supporting. The true, hard core, "skin in the game" activists within the schools and social services etc will find themselves increasingly isolated when they realise that their approach isn't as well supported as they thought it was.

I just keep thinking 'how dare they!'. If they'd referred a child for a tattoo or a piercing there'd be hell to pay, but they were doing this behind the parents back and charities were being paid to tell them this was better than okay. Every now and again something like this pops up to remind me how insanity has been normalised, facilitated and praised.

'Looked after' kids are easy marks for the monsters pushing this nonsense. In many cases they'd have parents that loved them even if they couldn't care for them. The ones who didn't even have that though, they were dealt a shitty hand and then fed into the GIDs machine so weird adults could feel good about themselves or get off on it.

TL:DR

Ahead of the new academic year, I hope that the opposition challenges Bridget Phillipson directly, and in public, to understand if she plans to maintain the safeguarding protections relating to both LGB and "T" children in the statutory KCSIE guidance for schools (due to go in to effect from 1st September). In the way that it's written, it's a critical layer of protection for the vulnerable cohort of children who may believe themselves to be "in the wrong body".

More thoughts:

I've been reflecting on this thread whilst doing some general background reading. I was looking at the Dentons' document, via a search for "Dentons" on Graham Linehan's substack, with a commentary by STILLTish.

There is a section in the document which specifically talks about capitalising on the limited window of political change to embed trans-affirmitive activism at the heart of government policy development. Obviously we're in such a window right now with the perfect storm that parliament is on a summer break and the new academic year starts in early September.

I've heard people say that Bridget Phillipson is secretly "GC" but I'm seeing very much the opposite. I've mentioned on previous threads that I asked a question about what a (then hypothetical) Labour government would do address gender identity belief being taught as fact in schools. Her response was that a Labour government would start a consultation.

Obviously Labour has now gone very quiet on the RHSE and Gender Questioning Children guidance that was created in draft by the previous government. It's all effectively been mothballed.

Instead, it has indeed started a process to revise the curriculum as a whole, led by Social Justice advocate Becky Francis.

I'm trying to avoid tin foil hat territory but it's all going rather... Dentons. I hadn't realised until I read it myself that Dentons focuses specifically on children and young people when suggesting strategy for trans-affirmative reform. As has been pointed out on a different thread, it cites sport as the most problematic area and it mentions that "hostility" in the UK is also linked to concern about medical transition for children. It suggests uncoupling medical transition from supporting children to be their authentic selves etc. A social justice led approach would obviously be ideal to do this.

Joining all the dots, and watching Bridget Phillipson pull the Free Speech Act in the final days before it came in to effect, I'm expecting her to do something similar with the critical safeguarding within the new KCSIE guidance, which is effective from 1st September. I'm expecting her to call it "burdensome" on schools who haven't had adequate guidance on how to safeguard "gender questioning children". Now that Damian Hinds has joined the public conversation in relation to the school to gender clinic pipeline, the KCSIE guidance is a key subject to open up right now.

IMO the government should be pushed to release the Gender Questioning Children guidance as is, with improvements to follow. The KCSIE statutory guidance references both this document and Cass. It is essential for safeguarding children, whilst any other "reviews" are undertaken.

Ps sorry about typos. I missed one on my previous post but hopefully caught the ones here on time!

To add: my question to Bridget Phillipson was in a Mumsnet Q&A.
Here:

https://www.mumsnet.com/news/mumsnet-founder-justine-roberts-puts-users-questions-to-shadow-education-secretary-bridget-phillipson

It immediately followed this one from ArabellaScott, which is also useful for context:

Let's hope Kemi does that.

Interesting reading the answers back; we've since had the publication of the Cass review which centres child wellbeing and makes it clear that social transition is not a neutral act.

Wes is clear he supports the Cass review.

It remains to be seen what happens next.

I note she mentioned single sex provision which actually hasn't yet made it to kcsie, whilst Cass has.

If they're going to be strong on protecting women and girls they need to clarify that for schools as far too many have merrily added mixed sex loos this last year