NHS Policy Audit - working party

[KnottyAuty]

Following on from Thread #23 of the Peggie v NHS Employment Tribunal. Anyone who wants to help with survey/audit of paperwork against the Equality Act protected characteristics please join here 😊

“a sexually-disinhibited pre-operative transsexual individual may be very distressing for other patients on a single-sex ward.”

no shit

Ah well those days are over - it's urinals for all of us from now on:
https://www.shewee.com/

My sister got one at a festival years and years ago and raved about it. Said some bloke nearly gave himself whiplash doing a double-take as she demonstrated it's effectiveness on a hedge 😂

Apparently not!

The list of 214 is seriously daunting. So I was thinking we could chip away at different regions. We have had Scotland, now working on London.

I've got my hands full, but if anyone was able to extract different regional lists from the providers list, I would be very grateful:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-provider-directory/

Maybe South East England, South West, Central/Midlands, East, North East and North West?

You don't need to do every area, but if anyone could help out by doing one, that would be a big help thanks!

Am a bit busy Knotty until after the weekend but will have a bash at a few then.

You only find NHS trusts in England & Wales. Some are ambulance trusts, some are mental health trusts but the vast majority are acute hospital trusts apart from the Isle of Wight NHS Trust which is all three in one.

Here is a list & links for all 217.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NHS_trusts_in_England

For any auditors, it looks like someone else is doing their own audit?!
You may get info via their results:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/mr_fred_baxter

Is there a quickish way to identify the largest Trusts, @KnottyAuty ?

Interesting - I’ve also
come across a few FOI requests on the same topic. One wonders if they are from the GC side or the TRA side…

Or we could focus on the larger cities as a first pass?
I don’t think we need to prove comprehensively that there are issues in every Trust… even just showing that many of the largest, best known have been “infiltrated” would demonstrate to the general public/NHS central boffins that this is a system-wide problem.

@KnottyAuty I am slowly getting through my allocation but hindered by the fact that London Ambulance do not have a single policy on their website and the only way to get them seems to be to email😡I am doing this but its slow coming back. Googling found a single EqIA completed 15 years ago! Hope to finish tomorrow or Saturday

Honestly I wouldn't go too far in your searching. The whole point is that it should be possible for the average person to find out easily what is happening. If you find nothing, then that is the note you put into the form - TBH if there are multiple providers with nothing at all on their website then that is possibly a finding in itself?

There have definitely been some persistent FOIers. I’ve come across a few from Gender GP so assume looking to see which Trusts still needed targeting?

the What Do They Know website is really helpful. I’ve found searching there is a good starting point. Often policy names are mentioned and you can then google the policy name plus trust name to find wherever it is hidden on their website.

Also worth noting that EIAs are often attached to the bottom of the policy document. Almost all the proformas for these have gender instead of sex and where they are completed, impact is only considered on trans people, e.g. trans+age or trans+religious belief or trans+pregnancy.

The list I’m working through all have these bad policies.

You are doing a sterling job motoring through your list! Very impressive!

I've just added a question to the very end asking if there is any evidence of single sex policies. I shall go through and add for all the ones already entered, but it would be helpful to have the yes/no for a quick snapshot - last question at the very bottom of the form

@KnottyAuty I can make some time tomorrow/ over the weekend - can you allocate me some not yet taken?

This is a brilliant project, and real grassroots activism / citizen journalism, although the results so far are utterly terrifying in terms of women's safety.

If we’re in the middle of working on a form, should this new question just show up, or do we need to copy our stuff somewhere safe and refresh? Do you know? (If you don’t, don’t worry, I will figure it out…)

Also!

What if there is evidence of SS policies, but in reality they are not actually SS policies…?

For the new question it should appear for you automatically but if not, try saving and then reopening? The box will appear on my spreadsheet of entries already received and then I will need to check through the uploads and check it off myself as go.

The single sex policies that are actually mixed sex policies are the most useful finds - because they are so obviously deceitful - they just DON'T do what they say on the tin?!

So maybe I need to tweak the question - maybe it should be more like - is there evidence that the single sex spaces have gone?

Maybe two questions:

Is there a specific, named SS policy?

Does it allow use of SS spaces by trans-identifying individuals?

I found patient policy on trans that contradicted ss policy but did not include it.

Most of the single sex policies I have found are from Trusts that also have trans patient and trans staff policies, and the SS policies are very explicit is saying that trans people should be free to use the facilities of the gender they identify with. It’s right there, in the policy. But all the surface level stuff, the web pages and blogs and news items about same-sex wards, about breaches, about the importance of SS wards never mention this glaring obfuscation.

As an example of obfuscation I read today an EqIA of a transgender policy which only considered the PC of gender reassignment as relevant to the equalities assessment of the policy, none of the other PC's. It mentioned gender but that was only in the context of self ID. FFS this is just a travesty and I struggle believe people trained and in paid employment to do this work can be so stupid and blatantly discriminatory to other groups.

which trust please - that is a terrible/good example

Possibly because the trans groups are so well funded and write the policy for people who are pleased not to have to do it themselves? Since Scottish Trans was mentioned in so many of the scottish policies I had a look at their accounts. The scottish government funding has been 83%+ of their income since they started back in 2002/03. But the totals are eyewatering - £0.5m per year over the last decade and since 2003 £7.5m. It's like a magic money tree - apply for a grant to teach volunteers how to lobby and apply for grants. Liaise with NHS, Prison, Gov Officials and Justice system. Rinse and repeat. Lottery has given them a total of £400k with last grant in 2021 for £135k. I'd love to know how much women's groups got in that same period - given that FWS felt lucky when John Swinney spoke to them outside of the IWD this month, I suspect it won't be very much. Really rubbish

A poster a few years ago FOIed a number of trusts, I think in Wales, for their EIAs and the ones who bothered to provide them didn’t appear to understand what an equality impact of a policy was supposed to be about. As you mention, they simply assessed their trans policy in relation to how it would advance “trans rights”. Not how it would affect other protected characteristics. A feature rather than a bug.

@TwoLoonsAndASprout if we want to imagine the effect of the 'urinary leash' we only need to think back to Covid when public loos were all closed. So many women found our lives restricted the area where we could go and return home without needing the loo. Whereas men had more freedom - I'm basing that on the number I saw happily urinating in public 🤢