Diversity Role Models and Stonewall: coming soon to a school near you (June 2026 announcement)

[BridgetPhillipsonIsACowardlyJobsworth]

I thought I would start a new thread for this, after trying to revive an old thread (from 2024) to notify people that Stonewall has just announced a new partnership with Diversity Role Models, 2 June, 2026.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/news/diversity-role-models-joins-the-stonewall-family-to-expand-support-for-schools-and-young-people-across-the-uk

Diversity Role Models joins the Stonewall family to expand support for schools and young people across the UK.

London, United Kingdom, June 2, 2026
Diversity Role Models and Stonewall have today announced a new chapter in their shared commitment to tackling bullying and helping schools create environments where every young person feels valued, respected and able to thrive.
^^
Under the new arrangement, Stonewall will support Diversity Role Models’ work as its sole member organisation, providing operational support, national infrastructure and additional resources to help extend Diversity Role Models’ educational programmes to more schools and young people across the UK.

Background to Diversity Role Models (previous MN threads), from 2024 and 2020 (I did find some of this difficult reading!)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens%3Cu%3Erights/5036673-diversity-role-models-charity

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3943889-Asda-partners-with-Diversity-Role-Models-and-gets-angry-response-to-love-has-no-age-limit-message-Edited-by-MNHQ-at-OPS-REQUEST?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

Thanks to @MrsOvertonsWindow @Ereshkigalangcleg for pointing me in the right direction.

I haven't seen anything yet in Safe Schools Alliance or Transgender Trend websites, but it was just announced today. I'm sure they will be on top of things, but if anyone here is in contact with them, it might be worth mentioning to them.

Their gross income vs gross expenditure is not going the right way, this obviously is a year+ old due to financial reporting periods. It’s weird they have a gross income for the period Aug 24 - Aug 25 but it isn’t recorded in any of the usual income types listed.

https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/5018338/financial-history?_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_organisationNumber=5018338

I'll be bumping this thread regularly throughout the new school year, as necessary.

Attention all parents with school age children:

As the new RSHE Statutory Guidance 2026 comes into force, here's an organization to watch out for in your child's school.

DIVERSITY ROLE MODELS

https://www.diversityrolemodels.org/
........………………
Background

Stonewall announced a new partnership with Diversity Role Models on 2 June, 2026.
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/news/diversity-role-models-joins-the-stonewall-family-to-expand-support-for-schools-and-young-people-across-the-uk

"Simon Blake OBE, Chief Executive of Stonewall, served as Chair of Diversity Role Models over a decade ago, during the organisation’s early years, and has remained closely connected to its work ever since. [my bold]

A great summary from
@MrsOvertonsWindow · 26/03/2024 14:50
Safe Schools Alliance & Transgender Trend have exposed how unsuitable these adult activists are to work with children in schools.

The SSA information highlights how DRM's online presence renders them unsuitable to be working with children & clarifies how this breaches DfE guidelines. They openly promote mixed sex changing, showers etc and got into hot water during lockdown for promoting the dodgy "‘love has no age’ and ‘love has no age limit’" paedophile associated slogans in an Asda funded home learning pack.

https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net/2020/06/18/love-has-no-age-a-letter-to-asda/

They make a good living out of children in schools but are unfortunately are a queer theory activist group so not politically impartial
^https://www.transgendertrend.com/diversity-role-models-conformity-new-ideology/^
Lots of information in the links to use in asking the school why they are outsourcing their inclusion work to an adult group like this.

MN threads from 2024 and 2020 (some of this is difficult reading!)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5036673-diversity-role-models-charity

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3943889-Asda-partners-with-Diversity-Role-Models-and-gets-angry-response-to-love-has-no-age-limit-message-Edited-by-MNHQ-at-OPS-REQUEST?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3940259-Why-are-ASDA-normalising-paedophilia-and-Child-Abuse?pg=1

…………………
Diversity Role Models were shown to be very clearly " inappropriate" - putting it mildly, and those threads from 2020 and 2024 demonstrate just how bad they were.

Here's a link to Diversity Role Models' Safeguarding Policy, dated approved 31 October 2025, due to be reviewed in October 2026:
https://www.diversityrolemodels.org/media/2274/20251031-safeguarding-and-child-protection-policy.pdf
I have downloaded it in case it disappears.

They are also partnered with Sex Education Forum, and Anti-Bullying Alliance, as well as Stonewall, according to their website.

https://www.sexeducationforum.org.uk/about/partners

Anti-Bullying Alliance

Thanks Bridget. Interesting that they have recruited a whole bunch of new trustees as at 1st August 2026. It looks like they may have plans.

Yes, thanks for that! Even more interesting that the names of the new trustees are still not on their website.

From Companies House:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07640644/officers

Former MP Ben Bradshaw and our old friend Kezia Dugdale are now Trustees of Diversity Role Models (among others).

Let's see where they take this...

Thanks for this. It's worth repeating that if your organisation's aim is to promote gender identity as factual, sex change as positive for children and to remove single sex sports, SS changing rooms etc then as queer theory political activists you have no place in schools. Other than as part of a balanced exploration of differing political viewpoints which schools should quite rightly be exploring with older children.

Making a living out of selling Gender Identity belief to children should now be at an end if schools and parents keep in mind the new DfE guidance linked upthread.

,

other new Trustees of Diversity Role Models:

Steven Friel (also a trustee of Stonewall)
Dunni Alao (also a trustee of Stonewall)
Debbie Doobay (COO at Stonewall)

previously noted:

Ben Bradshaw (also a trustee of Stonewall)
Kezia Dugdale

It's starting to look like less of a partnership between Diversity Role Models and Stonewall, and more like a Stonewall takeover!

How interesting. Well done for following all this, OP.

Just a few more to note!

Sean Latus, new Trustee for Diversity Role Models (also trustee at Stonewall)

Christopher Drennan, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 2 August 2026

Neil Feinson, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 31 July 2026

Daniela Grasso, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 2 August 2026

Kelly Anne Higson, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 31 July 2026

Costandinos Kyriakou, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 2 August 2026

Heidi Mallace, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 31 July 2026

George McCann, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 2 August 2026

Ross McKellar, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 31 July 2026

Dena Tahmasebi, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 31 July 2026

Symon Jon Wheelhouse, former Director of Diversity Role Models resigned 31 July 2026

It's a complete liquidation. Replaced by Stonewall trustees.

Diversity Role Models' company address has been changed to 192 St Johns St., London, which is also Stonewall's head office address.

They scrapped their Articles of Association and adopted new Articles on 10 August, 2026.

At this point, I'm thinking that Diversity Role Models may be dissolved and all its activities appropriated by Stonewall, in an attempt to leave the name and its dodgy past behind.

or

Everyone in Stonewall is about to jump ship for a career in telling teachers and children what and how they should be thinking in this rapidly-shrinking Brave New World.

I'm betting on the former 😆

Holy rebranding.

Making a living out of selling Gender Identity belief to children should now be at an end if schools and parents keep in mind the new DfE guidance linked upthread.

Unless you can pass it off as "lovely" Stonewall inclusion by rebranding the whole thing, as seems to be the case here. Stonewall are likely to be doubling down on access to schools at this point, probably from the "horrible conversion therapy" point of view.

More than ever, we need to watch out for activists within schools who will enable access, ignoring DfE guidance.

I have a slight hope that recognition is dawning amongst the Stonewall mafia that pushing gender identity has worked against the interests of gay men and lesbians. There are finally enough influential people reminding them that the real conversion therapy has been carried out by extreme transactivists persuading young people that they're not gay or lesbian, but the wrong sex or furries or whatever.

I see and hear countless gay men & lesbians now speaking out against what's been done to the young . So Stonewall will have to be exceptionally careful when producing whatever programmes they want to sell to schools or LAs because people are watching. And it's not homophobes (although they exist). It's their peers, it's parents and informed professionals. All now aware of how the self interested trans lobby were given free rein to gaslight and groom children into believing their developing bodies were wrong and need artificially correcting.

That's my hope anyway. I go back many decades with Stonewall to the Angela Mason days and know that they were once a respectable campaigning organisation. There's a shedload of issues in so many countries where the lives of gays and lesbians are under threat. It would be good to see them focus on that and to return to being a constructive, respectful of all rights organisation rather than the intolerant, protection racket that they morphed into.

The raison d'etre for the transfer of Diversity Role Models to Stonewall is on page 19 of DRM's last posted accounts, Annual Report 2025 (found on Companies House):

Diversity Role Models Annual Report 2025

Post balance sheet non-adjusting event

On 15 May 2026, Diversity Role Models entered into a Change of Control Agreement with Stonewall Equality Limited (Registered Charity No. 1101255), pursuant to which Stonewall will become the sole corporate Member of Diversity Role Models with effect from 1 August 2026. Diversity Role Models will continue to operate as a separate registered charity and company limited by guarantee under Stonewall's governance, delivering its educational programmes in schools in partnership with Stonewall's established infrastructure and support. [my bold]

So, it looks like they may be keeping the brand, and definitely keeping the purpose, although perhaps not exactly the same modus operandi or structure.

@MrsOvertonsWindow as you say, perhaps they have learned something here, but if they are still determined to get into schools, I'm not convinced, nor will I be holding my breath. Taking over DRM in such a way would have been the perfect opportunity to bury it, especially given its dodgy past, but it seems that Stonewall is determined to grow it instead.

And billing it on Stonewall's website as a "partnership" instead of a takeover is not exactly being above board. The information on Companies House is, of necessity, much more honest! It will be interesting to see where they go with this.

Angela Mason. Now there's a link to the past and an interesting history between Stonewall and government going back to the early 2000s when Mason went from being director of Stonewall to being director of the government's equality unit.

In 2001 Patricia Hewitt on becoming Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and Minister for Women, took the unit with her from the Cabinet Office and Angela Mason joined it.

Baroness (Sally) Morgan was briefly the junior level Minister for Women under Hewitt. Her name cropped up recently on the Cambridge / Jason Arday appointment committee,

Jacqui Smith became the middle level Minister for Women under
Hewitt and carried on as Minister for Women when Hewitt left in 2005.
Smith recently reappeared as a Baroness in a middle level Minister of State for Skills post (and Minister of State for Women and Equalities) under Starmer - and continues in Skills under Burnham.

The Minister for Women and Equalities post has been made Cabinet level in its own right under Burnham - to facilitate keeping Phillipson in the Cabinet? The Office for Equality and Opportunity has moved from the Cabinet Office to Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Thank you - you've put a lot into setting up and following up with this thread. Stonewall may be drawing on a different model, not taking over or absorbing but managing, administering and influencing. That's what they did with the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for LGBT+ in Parliament.

APPGs are informal special interest groups comprising members of Parliament of any party from the Commons and / or Lords that come together to discuss or promote a particular subject or issue.

There's a register of APPGs so you can find out which ones exist but they're not official or elected and regulated by formal Orders in the way that Select Committees are and they sometimes provide their own administration or have outside assistance with it.

Stonewall provided that at the time that the MP from Reigate and his Lords associates were pushing hard on the 'trans' and gender identity agenda and Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch were trying to hold the line. It may not be official and all that but still there was Stonewall in the heart of Parliament. I don't know if that's still the case.

Isn't there now a very powerful post / individul pushing the trans agenda in the Cabinet Office? Don't know names etc but I remember reading this and realising why so many anti safeguarding / anti women issues get promoted by keen MPs if it's all coming from the heart of government.

I don't know as I haven't kept up with everything that's being going on but just picked up odd bits and pieces. It wouldn't surprise me, though.

Could it be (Dame) Antonia Romeo that you read about- she's certainly powerful and has been subject of media interest as a somewhat 'controversial' appointment by Starmer - I can't remember why - as Cabinet Secretary. She is of course head of the Civil Service and we know that the top of it is thick with the Stonewall-type agenda and that departments have been carrying on defying the Supreme Court ruling on sex in the Equality Act.