“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?

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

Given the college made medical and welfare decisions about the child without her consent, pretty bloody cross with the college I should imagine.

If the parent was abusive and they had concerns, there's no way they'd have put the child at risk by asking 1000s of staff and pupils to attempt to keep a such a secret.

you put the child at risk yourself there as you had no idea how the parents would react

This is operating on a basis where parents are assumed a risk to their children until proven safe. But in law it is the other way around. The law presumes that the parents are the best people to make decisions for the child, unless and until it is decided in court that they are unfit (after a lot of fact finding, as I said upthread).

And this is a precedent that generally works very, very well. We have so much evidence that outcomes are worse for children (on a statistical level) when the state takes over their care.

Because, in the vast majority of cases, parents care more about their children than anyone else does. That's why the buck stops with us. We are the ones who will tirelessly advocate for our children, who know them best.

Parental responsibility exists in law for a very good reason.

Another thanks for your clear and refreshingly non-cryptic posts @RobinHeartella!

Absolutely!

I am reflecting on the contrast between Robin's posts and those of the cryptic poster who seems to self-ID as a GC arbiter of safeguarding and it's quite stark to say the least.

If the school thought that socially transitioning the child without the consent or knowledge of the parents would put the child at risk if the parents discovered they'd done this, why on earth did they do this in the first place?

Especially as KCSIE states that issues concerning a gender questioning child should be discussed with parents except in the extremely rare cases where this would endanger the child. As Robin has explained, a school does not have the right to remove parental responsibility, so unless there is a court order in place stating that parents shouldn't be told, this should be discussed with the parents.

And since the entire school was told, the parents were obviously going to find out eventually, so if they thought the child would be put in danger by socially transitioning the child, the best course of action would have been to not do the social transition in the first place.

Safeguarding at the school was obviously non-existent if the danger you suggest is actually real.

If the school believes that the child is would be endangered if the parents discovered their child had been socially transitioned at school, the school shouldn't have done it.

If the school believes that socially transitioning the child is a harmless act, they should have told the parents.

Another excellent post robin and also Old Crone.

The same things are being repeated here and some are deliberately ignoring.

And not just ignoring, WarriorN, making things up, to boot.

It doesn't matter they they think you outed the child (and it's pathetic that the example they give is of outing gay children, because sexuality and gender identity aren't comparable at all), the policy you quote is clear:

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.

They broke their own policy. They have no grounds. They not only did not do this in partnership with the child's parents, they even acted to hide it from the parents.

He didn't even "out" the child - mother knew she was gender questioning.

He outed the fact that the college had socially transitioned the child to the mother.

Against kcsie

I think in reality, the school just did what was easiest for them - avoid conflict with the child and the parent, hope nobody notices.

@Usernamesareboring1, in light of what @RobinHeartella has said, it would be very useful if you could provide any facts that you believe refutes it.

Specifically the part about parental responsibility.

And particularly where she says

"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."

Because Robin's interpretation of KCSIE guidelines appears to contradict yours in that the op informing the parents wasn't actually wrong.

You're wrong about the should and must. The difference isn't that one's criminal and one isn't. Must means it's legislated elsewhere so MUST be followed. If it's 'should' it's not legislated and can be ignored if there is good reason for doing so.

I still can't get my head around why people think it's okay for OP to ignore policies and procedures for reporting safeguarding issues with staff/education settings just because the college might have though. Two wrongs don't make a right.

"Should" cannot be "ignored". There may be some specific circumstances for specific children where you can't fulfil all the "should" obligations but I disagree strongly that that means you can "ignore" them, or have blanket policies that contradict them, as op's school may have done.

Here is an example of "should" being used in KCSIE (page 3).

2. Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is everyone’s responsibility. ‘Children’ includes everyone under the age of 18. Everyone who comes into contact with children and their families has a role to play. In order to fulfil this responsibility effectively, all practitioners should make sure their approach is child centred. This means that they should consider, at all times, what is in the best interests of the child.

Clearly, there are no circumstances where we would "ignore" the instruction "you should consider at all times what is in the best interests of the child". You just haven't committed an offence if you fail to manage it. "Must" is saved for specific actions that you can have shown to have legally neglected to do.

The difference isn't that one's criminal and one isn't.

Nobody on this thread has claimed that this is the difference. An example of a "must" was given, that linked to criminality (FGM) but nobody has ever said that every must falls into this category. Law is civil as well as criminal.

In any case, parental responsibility is an overarching legal construct that supersedes individual details in KCSIE (although, I maintain that nowhere in KCSIE is the principle of parental responsibility contradicted).

Parental responsibility doesn't just cover education, it covers medical care and many other aspects of a child's life. It cannot be contradicted by a school's policies or a DSL

Would a school have a duty to disclose to the parent suspicions of e.g. autism or mental health problems?

I'm going to attempt a layman's guess at that....

I should imagine they can't act on those suspicions without talking to a parent first e.g. commissioning an assessment. But having those suspicions.. nobody can have their thoughts policed and/or subject to legislation so I'm guessing not.

We shouldn't deliberately hide information like that from parents, no.

That's not to say we are continually communicating the minutiae of every tiny thing we do each day as a school. There are reporting cycles and so on.

If something is just a vague early-stage suspicion then it might not warrant immediate reporting to the parent: we'd record it internally (for example via the app "CPOMS"), but NB a parent has the right at any time to demand an up to date copy of all CPOMS records. At any time, for any reason.

We might CPOMS something like "Jane seemed to have been crying when she entered my lesson". That would simply be kept on file for head of year to review a wider picture, with no expectation to tell the parent immediately. But if we DID mention it to the parent, that is not going against policy. It might be OTT but it's never forbidden. There is nothing we should hide from the parents.

The only exception is we don't divulge names of other students to a parent. Eg "Jane was hit by another student in the playground": the identity of the other student would be redacted when we inform Jane's parents. Nothing else is redacted.

Not sure about duty but we found out about DD's dyspraxia from a helpful teacher who spotted it in Y1. It benefits the child when school and parents communicate openly with one another.

I suppose it goes back to the duty to act in the best interests of the child, and also the school's lack of authority to act on the child's behalf if they need additional services.

If the school don't communicate with the parent, the child is left in limbo.

Though interestingly on other parts of this site you do see parents getting affronted when teachers suggest a child may have additional needs. Other posters jump in saying how dare the teacher suggest such things, they aren't trained to diagnose. Teachers can't win.

More excellent illustrations RobinHeartella, thank you.

I would add that my understanding and best practice has always been that we would raise a concern with a parent around behaviour, attention, social interaction, ability, but we wouldn't say that we think it's autism or adhd.

Because we are not qualified to make that diagnosis.

Even in a send school we are careful to be sure which children have diagnoses and which dont.

Posted too soon

Which is why it's astonishing that any school or college take steps towards socially transitioning a child, whether or not they have a diagnosis of gender questioning/ distress, without parental knowledge or consent.

Regarding CPOMS, there is a box that can be ticked for gender identity. What I'm not sure about is if that has any magical AI ability to change all the names and pronouns.

We write Cpoms with a view that a parent and a court of law are able to see them at any point.

Names and who they are needs to be accurate as these are legal documents.

If a parent wanted to request sight of these documents (and they may be in other forms) they can.

Because they have parental responsibility.

So again there's no 'safeguarding sense ' to withhold this information.

Changed names and pronouns also affect Cpoms for other children where there's been an incident where they need to be included. There are all sorts of issues with that around suppressing a child's sex unless the college were in the habit of recording FtM or similar.

We have to explain who each person involved in the incident is. Eg LSA, supply, classmate, DSL.

I suppose it goes back to the duty to act in the best interests of the child, and also the school's lack of authority to act on the child's behalf if they need additional services.

Yes - this would have been vital information for the parent of a gender distressed child to communicate to external services who may be working with the child.

Let's face it, since Cass and the dropping of the affirmative approach (though that could be debated) activist staff are arrogantly grabbing at straws and mis interpreting "should" and "pending review" as "can be totally ignored" in a last ditch attempt to ensure children do transition.

Separating children from their parents by encouraging secrecy and lies is exactly how grooming happens, as prevent training clearly illustrates.

It's very hard not to sit through that and make all the comparisons.

I'd like to reiterate: the college has no policy on this. At all. Other than KCSiE, which is implied as part of the college's safeguarding policy.
KCSiE clearly states that the parents should be told about their child's social transition. Nothing in KCSiE states that I should not contact the parents to inform them that the college is committing a breach of safeguarding concerning their child. Which is protected under Whistleblowing legislation, at any rate.