Northern Ireland's health trusts say transgender staff must be allowed to use toilets of new gender - paving way for repeat of Scottish 'Beth Upton' legal case

[IwantToRetire]

All five of the trusts – Belfast, Northern, Southern, Western, and South Eastern – said they have policies for their staff, but not for patients.

The documents all state, each in identical wording, under the heading ‘Single sex toilet facilities’, that “while every effort should be made to deal with concerns amongst staff it should be made clear that once (insert name) begins the process of changing gender identity they will use the appropriate facilities of their new gender”.

https://www.newsletter.co.uk/health/northern-irelands-health-trusts-say-transgender-staff-must-be-allowed-to-use-toilets-of-new-gender-paving-way-for-repeat-of-scottish-beth-upton-legal-case-5024617

As someone living in NI, I'm not happy to hear this. I can't imagine that managers and staff in the various Trusts haven't been keeping an eye on the Peggie v Fife NHS case, so the decision to state these maximalist staff policies feels political rather than arising from ignorance of the employment legislation.

And, as a patient, I am extremely unhappy that no policies for patient safety/dignity have been put in place. Although, with these policies for staff they've implemented, I'm not hopeful that the Trusts would put patients' needs front and centre in any policies they created.

NI has cultural differences to GB, especially when it comes to many social issues, and people here are generally socially conservative. So the creation of these policies in the public sector does not go down well with many members of the communities that the Trusts are supposed to serve. It's imposed upon us, and legislators, civil servants, and bureaucrats of all sorts, don't seem to care that the public is not in alignment with the push towards full adherence to Genderist ideology.

Transwomen are a tiny number.
Rape survivors advocacy groups say 1 in 6 women and girls will suffer a rape or serious sexual assault in their life times.
That's millions of various ages, carry that trauma with them.
The vast majority of transwomen still have a working penis. Why can't these decision makers appreciate the affect putting somebody with a penis in the next stall to a rape survivor who's sitting with her knickers round her ankles has on them? A place that has always been safe.
The tiny number of transwomen need to be accommodated, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the vastly larger numbers of rape survivors.

It's usually less clean if blokes are using it.

I'm live and let live but I'm not taking part in some blokes fetish as he tries to ' be a woman'

The reason biological women with short hair etc are being challenged is because of men intruding into women's spaces. Men should stay out.

The reason biological women with short hair etc are being challenged is because of men intruding into women's spaces. Men should stay out.

Exactly. This only becomes an issue because now women can’t be sure a toilet user is female, given some men now seem to think the ladies loos are a free for all. It needs to go back to how it worked well for decades - ladies loos are for females only and males go elsewhere. Very simple.

Are NHS trusts subject to Freedom of Information legislation? It would be interesting to see their risk assessment in respect of these policies, how they have consulted staff on them, why they are not providing third spaces, etc.

What has this to do with this thread about NHS rules in Ireland?

There has been another thread dedicated to this topic recently, so perhaps your post has been accidentally placed in this thread on a totally unrelated topic?

Cis is a slur.

Correct. It's women and transwomen

Yes , they are subject to FOI as a public body. If NHS Fife is anything to go by, there won’t be any impact assessments done.

You think that NHS boards would be backpedaling like mad given court cases and Health secretary instructions

‘Single sex toilet facilities’, that “while every effort should be made to deal with concerns amongst staff it should be made clear that once (insert name) begins the process of changing gender identity they will use the appropriate facilities of their new gender

'The appropriate facilities of their new gender' are the same sex toilets they were using before they began expressing their beliefs about their selves, and the concerns among staff that should be dealt with is that the males in trousers should be completely accepting of the males in frocks continuing to use the men's toilets.

The answer, from direct experience, is YES.

NHS Trusts are subject to FOI requests.

I've done it before.

There are limited circumstances in which they can refuse to answer. However they are notorious for not replying, giving very vague responses to try and dodge the question and replying much later than they legally should.

When writing a FOI request, the wording therefore matters. You have to be really specific and narrow and define everything in a crystal clear way to prevent the pr / spun answer.

It's worth getting people who have experience of doing one to check your wording before sending.

Utterly disgusting, NHS dick pandering as per usual.

I'm honestly not remotely surprised. Women's safety is completely disregarded in NI NHS.

18 yo Dd was in hospital recently for a week. During that time she was placed in mixed wards 3 times, despite the staff being made explicitly aware of her vulnerability due to previous sexual assault.

It was extremely traumatic for her and me to have to repeatedly relay the reasons why she couldn't be in a mixed ward. Each time there was much eye rolling and we were made to feel that we were being difficult. Eventually she was moved into a side ward, but even the cleaner made inappropriate comments about her being 'special' as she had to get the room ready for her.

Quite apart from that she was immobile and using bed pans, and to be doing that in a ward with only a flimsy curtain between her and the 3 men in the room was unacceptable for her dignity.

So this does not come as a surprise at all.

They usually mark it 'no risk' because guess what, trans women are women so no problemo.

🙄 So a risk assessment in name only, where they haven't troubled themselves to check the stats on the huge increase in assaults on women in mixed sex changing facilities.

So open minded their brains have fallen out.

I agree with most of this, but I don't think anyone should worry too much about getting the wording wrong. You can always refine the wording later if they try to get out of responding, or just send another request. It only takes a few minutes on WhatDoTheyKnow

The best way to get a feel for what to write is to look at some successful requests, like this one:
Gender reassignment and/or transgender guidance and policies

You'd think, but they don't seem to.

Thanks @RedToothBrush I'm thinking of doing one to my local trust in that case. I may check wording on this board before sending, to hopefully corner them as much as possible into having to answer truthfully.

I'm so sorry your DD and you had to go through that, it's disgraceful. Of all places, a medical setting should be trauma-informed, but standards can be so low in general in the NHS, and they're so captured, that I'm not surprised.

Northern Ireland, not Ireland. NHS rules don't apply to Ireland.

I don't know what the story is with the HSE in Ireland but neither of my two dc who work for the HSE have mentioned anything but that could be more to do with no trans individuals working with them than no rules in place.

I hope Mike Nesbitt (health minister) steps up and does something about this like he did with the puberty blockers for kids.

The Assembly has the same policy in place. This will have been a central policy (HR including equality is a shared service across all of health in NI) that the trusts have just cut and pasted their own details into, that's how our organisation does it anyway. It's very unlikely they'll have done their own impact/risk assessments.

Al Big organisations will have to review their policies in the light of the Supreme Court ruling. I’m sure they’ll come up with a sensible solution.