“Outing” and “Transphobia”: Informing a parent that her child was being “socially transitioned” by a school/college

[Steve3742]

So, I’m having a problem with my employer.

I am—or was—a Learning Support Assistant at Nottingham College, and have worked for them nearly continuously since 2006.

Last September, I was informed that a vulnerable 16-year-old autistic girl was to be socially transitioned within the college, adopting a male name and “he/him” pronouns. I was also informed that her mother had not been consulted and that this information was to be deliberately kept from her. After unsuccessfully raising my concerns with Safeguarding that withholding important information about her daughter’s health and well-being was a risk for the child, I decided to inform the mother about what was happening. As a result, I was fired.

The college’s decision to hide the social transition of a vulnerable 16-year-old girl from her mother was unlawful and violates both the Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE) statutory guidance and the Department for Education’s Guidance on Gender-Questioning Children. Both frameworks are informed by the evidence presented in the Cass Review, which emphasises that social transition is not a neutral act and can be harmful to a child’s welfare, particularly for vulnerable individuals.

Paragraph 208 in KCSiE states that supporting a gender questioning child “should be in partnership with the child’s parents” and clinical advice should be sought.

By engaging in this deception, the college directly breached safeguarding principles. Any collaboration between adult staff and a vulnerable child to withhold information from their parents is a clear violation of fundamental safeguarding standards. My referral to safeguarding referenced all these points but wasn’t acted upon. I raised these concerns multiple times during the disciplinary process, yet they were repeatedly dismissed.

I’m taking the college to a Tribunal for false dismissal (and am gardening to help with that, check the CJ site). But one of the objections raised against me is that I “outed” the child, with all the connotations that go with that, the abuse that gay children often face from unaccepting parents.

I don’t think the two situations are comparable. For a start, the parent already knew her child was gender-questioning, so she wasn’t “outed” in that sense. She was informed, by me, about what the college was doing, not any new information about her daughter. She was told that the college was facilitating the “social transition” of her daughter and, particularly egregiously, that the college was trying to keep this information about their activities hidden from her.

All the relevant guidance, some of which is statutory, states that she had a right to know this. That she had a right to be consulted about it. Indeed, that the college had a duty to consult with her about this. One that it not only failed in but actively tried to subvert by conspiring with a vulnerable 16 year old child to keep their activities secret from her. Conspiracies between adults and children to keep secrets from parents are a huge safeguarding red flag.

Not only this, but it can be argued that a child’s sexuality is the child’s business and, even if the college were to find out about it, they have no reason to disclose it to anyone. Even Section 28 didn’t put a duty on a school or college to inform a child’s parents that they were gay, were they to find out that they were. But the guidance quoted above does include a duty to consult with a child’s parents about their “social transition”, for good reason. “Social transition” involves the school or college making significant changes to the way it operates. Names must be changed, wrong-sex pronouns must be used by staff and students, decisions need to be taken about what punishments, if any, should be meted out to dissenters, and so on. Certainly, this is not a secret – all the child’s fellow students and all the staff in the class will know about it. It cannot be claimed, therefore, that this should be kept from the child’s parents in the name of privacy or confidentiality – such things do not exist for social transition, the nature of it requires widespread dissemination. It is instead, as I’ve already said, a conspiracy – a group of people working together to do something, and to keep their activity hidden from other people.

Nothing comparable could be said about gay children, even in the days of Section 28. This is not the same thing.

What do you all think?

Not just this thread to be fair, it's not the first time safeguarding has been argued out on here and posters have accused people of caring too much about established safeguarding protocol and complained about them pointing out of a GC organisation was ignoring it, which is weird coming from people who claim to care about children as much as we do.

‘It is vitally important that educators should be able to raise reasonable concerns about a child’s welfare with the child’s parents without fear of losing their jobs. Nottingham College has made a serious mistake in dismissing Stephen, and we are ready to take the fight to a final hearing if necessary.’ Jon Heath, JR Levins

It was a reasonable concern about the college's actions.

You don't keep secrets from parents.

You put children and staff at risk

That's an interesting interpretation of a) what I said and b) what horrifies me.

I get it. I'll summarise my understanding of your position on this:

No matter how bat-shit a DSL's directive might be, even if it leads a child into an irreversible medicalised pathway, it needs to be followed to the letter unless the process to escalate it that you won't quote or screenshot is followed. If that escalation process prolongs and/or increases the child's exposure to potential harm (and potential isolation from a parent) so be it. That's "safeguarding" according to the bit of KCSIE I'm too stupid/lazy to find.

Am I close?

Not just this thread to be fair, it's not the first time safeguarding has been argued out on here and posters have accused people of caring too much about established safeguarding protocol and complained about them pointing out of a GC organisation was ignoring it, which is weird coming from people who claim to care about children as much as we do.

Well, laws and guidelines tend to change in the light of cases such as these, even if he looses on technicalities.

As Datun says, bring on the sunlight.

Usernamesareboring1 · Today 17:01

Genuine question - why do you and PP not want to read the KCSIE guidance? Why do you want to just assume OP is correct and anyone who says they're wrong has to provide you with a screenshot of a small section to read rather than you read the whole thing?

Genuine answer; the done thing is, when making a bold claim as you did, to provide evidence to support your claim. We can't expect people to believe, without evidence.

Don't be surprised that you get shot down, if you don't, or unable to provide evidence to support what you say, if asked.

Other posters have provided evidence to back what they say. Why are you unwilling to do likewise?

I am very concerned for you that this is so identifiable as you have named the college. I think you should ask MNHQ to redact some of the information. There's also a more private place you can post this.

If an organisation is acting in a way that directly contravenes law/statutory guidance and direct harm may be occurring to an individual, especially a vulnerable minor, how long is it expected for a concerned person to keep raising it via higher and higher powers before they can reasonably whistle-blow?

You are transitioning without telling parents.
...
We know what we are doing
....
But it us against guidance
...
We know what we are doing
....
Go towards, repeat.

If the response had been 'we know what we are doing, ss is involved and have agreed due to parental risk' that might be different, but that does not seem to be the case here.

So how long should the OP have waited?
A week, 3 weeks, a term, a year??

Your ilk- yeah that’s the smug virtue signalers who have to be dragged to reality. It’s pretty obvious to the rest of us.

Yes.

And the person with immediate legal responsibility for the child is the parent.

Has a responsibility to keep the child safe.

Why should she NOT know?

we know what we are doing, ss is involved and have agreed due to parental risk'

And that would have been extremely reasonable to have shared with the op.

Working together document describes the importance of sharing information in a timely fashion.

people not following established safeguarding protocol

Sorry but you keep using the phrase "safeguarding protocol" and I don't think you know what it means. It is never "safeguarding protocol" to deliberately hide information from parents with parental responsibility. Nowhere in KCSIE does it say that it is protocol to hide information from parents. Nowhere in KCSIE does it say you are breaking protocol by telling parents things about their child.

Just like we do not hide anything from social services or the police (if they were to ask questions), similarly we do not hide things from parents.

As I said upthread, parents have the right to request a copy of literally everything you have recorded about their child. Every little footnote in your mark book, every internal memo, they have a right to read. As I say I've known parents to exercise this right.

If you're a teacher, usernamesareboring, you'd know this. Absolutely everything you have written or typed about a child can be inspected by the parent.

Out of interest, do you understand what "parental responsibility" means? It means that parent has the ultimate responsibility for decision-making about that child. It is fundamental. It can only be overridden (in exceptional circumstances) by the courts.

Parental responsibility cannot be revoked by a school DSL.

Datun · Today 17:35

'Clues'

I know, right? It's redolent of Senator Mccarthy:

"I have a list in my pocket with the names of 130 Communists."

Anyone would think that it's phantom evidence. You'd get more compelling evidence from Nostradamus.

There's also been a lot of chat about "should" vs "must" in KCSIE. Pp seems to think if it says "should", those things are optional. No. The only difference is that you won't be legally sanctioned if you fail to do what you "should". You should still do them. A school can't instruct you to do the opposite. A school can't fire you for following the guidance in KCSIE, by saying they instructed you to do the opposite.

(Things in the "must" list include reporting FGM. If you fail to report FGM it's literally an offence, you're considered complicit in a crime.)

So the only difference is it's not a crime not to do what KCSIE says you should. That does NOT mean those things are optional.

Why are you playing stupid cryptic games? Lots of people interested in this, I just don’t understand why you can’t specify the appropriate paragraphs that you are using to back up your argument.

Is there some sort of ban on specifying this on MN that prevents you from naming the references directly? I am not really understanding all the indirect/cryptic/ wink wink nudge nudge coyness. Why can’t you just say?

It doesn't even matter. Those sorts of chain-of-report guidelines are secondary to the fundamental principle of parental responsibility.

Nowhere does it say in KCSIE that you should do any of those reports instead of telling parents. Only in addition to.

If you think a child is at risk from his parents, there's a procedure for getting social services and/or the police to investigate, but that STILL has to end with the courts revoking parental responsibility. Only the courts can do that, and only after hearing a huge amount of evidence and viewpoints, including the parents themselves.

A school DSL cannot do that. A school DSL does not have the expertise, resources, or information to make that decision.

(As an aside, I'm here typing all these paragraphs, not because I hope to get through to the pp who is confused about safeguarding, but because there may be new parents and/or new teachers on here, who might not fully understand parental responsibility.)

Ps, not to mention, if a parent is up in court getting their parental responsibility revoked, they have the right to representation and appeal.

A school DSL can't appoint himself investigator, judge, and jury, all in one, and make that call to revoke parental responsibility.

And, no, it doesn't say in KCSIE that a DSL can do that.

We teachers have read it from start to finish every September! That's a lot of times in some of our cases!

One more thing, if any organisation wants to override a parental decision in any way (eg a hospital disagrees about a child's care), that ultimately is decided by the courts too.

Lots of examples of this in the news over the years if you're interested.

Thank you for all your helpful posts Robin.

Seconded 👍👍

Thirded!
👍👍👍

This.
You talk about safeguarding, but you put the child at risk yourself there as you had no idea how the parents would react.

Ooh, the chorus just rushed in the back-stage door!

Excellent post, as are the rest

It's a statutory should