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 😊

So this training event is being delivered by a Charity called Gendered Intelligence.

They offer consultancy plus a set of courses, some delivered remotely, some face to face.
and in addition:
“We also engage with public policy and seek to influence legislation, the media, policy and research at a national level.”

They operate: “Regular youth groups in London, Leeds and online • Residentials including summer camps and Pride trips • 1:1 support for young TNBQ people, including mentoring in educational settings • A support line for anyone 18+ who is personally impacted by the NHS gender care waiting list; associated support groups • A Parents & Carers group”.
as well as mentoring, organising a focus group to review Cass, topless swimming sessions, membership of steering group for Queer Futures2 at Lancaster Uni, connections to other Unis.

They list some past clients including Girl Guides, Tesco, the Football Association, SOAS, MIND, scope, Oxfam, Stonewall, Pearson, the YHA etc.

Their website has a document which gives some pricing of their offerings from 2024. Courses varied from £415 for a 105 minute remotely delivered course, to over £4k plus expenses for a half day face to face session.

Their last set of accounts 23/24 showed annual income of about £1.5M, and £.5m cash in the bank. Seems a lot, but I don’t know what their cash flow challenges are. Their donors include Comic Relief, Nat’L Lottery and two NHS Trusts (how does that happen?).

For some reason, I recognised Cleo, head of public engagement. Journalist Jill Foster took a look at a few of the GI team on a twitter post: :https://x.com/JournalistJill/status/1891921256976380016/photo/1

Do they seem like a worthy charity, or a leeching group of trans activists negatively impacting the rights of girls and women?

I hope the information they pitch in their course to the NHS about the legislation, and requirement for single sex services and spaces, is accurate.

Good thinking - what did your trusts call the guidance?

Genfered Intelligence are terribly keen on influencing children and young people. Their excessive influence on GIDs was exposed by Hannah Barnes in Time to Think. As above they offer "mentoring" to children in schools - unbelievably suggesting that schools pay them public funds (designed fto support children) and a self interested adult from the organisation will "mentor" a gender confused child.

Sorry - don't mean to derail this excellent thread but they're an excessively powerful organisation in receipt of masses of public funds who have yet to be subject to the same level of scrutiny that Stonewall has had.

Thanks - v interesting.

I wondered why Leeds is one of their centres. Then I remembered that Mermaids (which is struggling I think), which also centres children, is based in a suburb of Leeds - Yeadon. maybe there’s a connection?

Agree they need scrutiny. The list of clients and donors is wild. Would especially like the NHS Trusts in Sheffield and Nottingham to explain why they donated.

I couldn't volunteer for Scotland as was going out but have downloaded a couple of trust policies. your suggested form is helpful as it made me think about how to scrutinise, for e.g, cross dressing and non binary are mentioned in my area but are very woolly about shared facilities. will continue mining in my area save to hardrive and await your form.

It is important to note that a public can not go beyond the powers that are provided for by law. IANAL but in my opinion, giving “rights” for cross dressers and non binary people, could be “ultra vires”

Public body

Sorry - completely de-railed by miserable DC this evening! And have meetings tomorrow - so please do keep reviewing and I'll sort the online form by tomorrow eve - thanks all!

GI is a long standing campaigning trans charity, along with GIRES and Press for Change

It is free training - worth signing on.

@KnottyAuty adding to my thoughts on ultra vires which means there is a potential for a judicial review about NHS policies that effect the public, i have asked Ph47 for an opinion on the peggie thread.

I am going to e mail all interested orgs such as sex matters, free speech union, legal feminist, WRN re this because i think this avenue might be a runner as a judicial review takes us beyond employment law into constitutional and public law, and i am up for it.

Is there other bodies i can try to galvanise

GI is a long standing campaigning trans charity, along with GIRES and Press for Change

Also highly influential in the original EHRC guidelines for interpreting the Equality Act in favour of "trans rights" over women's.

In one case it was transgender guidance and in another case it was an EDI strategy doc. NHS Trusts and indeed other public sector orgs often keep their policies streamlined and top level whilst the detailed implementation is contained in ancillary documents. They should be cross referenced but it is worth a bit of searching I think.

Missed signing up for the Scottish groups - will wait for the next tranche.

@KnottyAuty, two (connected?) thoughts:

I’m slightly concerned about bad faith actors and others deliberately skewing results. Is it worth having more than one set of eyes on individual trusts? Also just generally multiple eyes means higher likelihood of catching everything, especially if it’s pithy/deliberately obscure. I’d be happy to duplicate some random selection of the Scottish trusts if that seems sensible.

And is there some way of verifying users before they upload results to any site you set up?

No criticism meant to all those already signed up! Just worrying in advance…

Re: people’s thoughts about journalists etc:

The Courier, though small, seems to have the bit between its teeth on this one, especially for the Scottish trusts. And other papers seem to be picking up on what the Courier is publishing.

Other options: Sonia Sodha in the Observer would be a good one, if anyone has an in there?

Someone on the other thread (@igmum) mentioned getting Sex Matters involved - they definitely have a publicity team.

Other thoughts?

I think this concern is valid and I would be happy for someone to check my contribution [Grampian, Forth Valley and the ever lovely NHS Fife]

Good plan - I was thinking we might do this once we got the data together, but if you can get contact names/details in advance that would be good

A random sample of quality assurance would be a great idea - the more eyes the better. I can add a box to for those who are doing any QA entries.

If the trust name is put in exactly as it is on the list, then the excel sheet which comes out the back can be ordered by name and the results cross checked.

I'll use a surveymonkey account which doesn't track who is returning results. So we will all be entirely anonymous.

But in that vein, maybe the thing to do is to post here with the name of the trust and the date/time that you entered the data - that is automatically logged by surveymonkey. Then I can see who has posted what and if someone decides to spam in results it will take 2 clicks to dump any useless data/interference.

I shall think about this later and post instructions/link etc

Does Marion Calder ( FWS, I think) not work for NHS Lothian, I would have thought she would be very knowledgeable about this for NHS Lothian

It looks like the results can be shared via the SM site in different formats. I shall have a look at what a "dashboard" can offer

https://help.surveymonkey.com/en/surveymonkey/analyze/sharing-survey-results/

Or I may opt for Jotform which is clunkier but free

I know our local MH trust has no mention of sex whatsoever in the EDI / EqIAs, only gender gets a look in.

@TwoLoonsAndASprout Group 4 has NHS Lothian which is huge and incredibly hard to find things on their website. If you'd like to help me with Group 4 I'd be grateful

Can do! Anything in particular, or shall I just start digging?

(I’ve just started digging…)

Great thanks @TwoLoonsAndASprout , the following is roughly what it's suggested we cover:
Contact Details:
Name of Trust
Name of Chief executive:
Postal Address:
CEO Contact Email Address:
Document Download:
Website address for DEI policy:
Website address for EqIA for Changing Room Policy:
Website address for other relevant policy:
Date web pages accessed/documents downloaded:
Basic Details of Relevant Policy
Name of Changing Room Policy Document or EqIA (or other relevant doc if specific policy or risk assessment not found):
Author:
Date of publication:
Date of next review:
Total number of pages:
Policy Audit against Equality Act 2010
Reference to protected characteristics: tick box for all 9 with terms that specifically match the EA terms
Characteristics listed which are similar to the EA terms but not the same.
Characteristics listed which bear no resemblance to the EA terms
Page number within document when characteristics first listed/defined:
Single sex changing room policy directly addressed/mentioned: y/n, cut and paste wording and give page number
Policy on trans gender changing room use - y/n, cut and paste wording and give page number