The Ideological Capture of Scotland's Care Inspectorate
Who will protect the children in Scotland's care system?
Last week The Telegraph reported that Scotland’s social care watchdog is advocating the social and medical transition of vulnerable young people in the care system.
Scotland’s Care Inspectorate has issued new guidelines - “Guidance for children and young people’s services on the inclusion of transgender including non-binary young people” - to the services responsible for children and young people in care.
The 22-page document suggests that children as young as twelve can consent to so-called ‘gender affirming’ medical interventions as they can be “Presumed to have sufficient capacity to make decisions about medical treatment”. It cites a case study in which a young girl within the care system was ‘supported’ by her children’s care home to undergo a mastectomy - or ‘chest reconstructive surgery’ as the guidance dishonestly describes it.
The guidelines suggest that if children in care have gender issues, they can be referred to Glasgow’s Sandyford Clinic.
In autumn last year, we reported on several stories involving the Sandyford. Firstly, in a secret recording leaked to The Telegraph, a senior consultant clinical psychologist at the clinic openly admitted that there are ‘huge gaps’ in evidence around ‘trans healthcare’, that patients’ mental health assessments are based almost entirely on their own self-diagnosis and that Scottish gender clinics are following WPATH’s guidelines which, to say the least, are extremely troubling.
Then a report uncovered issues of grave concern regarding the treatment of gender confused children at the Sandyford.
A research paper produced by NHS clinicians who carried out an appraisal of the Sandyford revealed that children as young as nine years old have been prescribed puberty blockers there. Furthermore, hormone treatments have been provided to a ‘disproportionate’ number of patients on the autism spectrum and to vulnerable children suffering with co-morbidities such as anxiety and depression.
Only a few days later, The Times reported that a number of Sandyford staff members have tried to ‘blow the whistle’ on the service in recent years.
Following a Freedom of Information request lodged by The Times, the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board confirmed that they “Hold information relating to concerns raised by staff under whistleblowing policies”. It disclosed that, over the last five years, it has investigated 89 complaints about the clinic, 67 of which were either upheld or partially upheld.
That notwithstanding, Scotland’s Care Inspectorate still considers that the Sandyford Clinic is an appropriate organisation to which to refer vulnerable children in care if they have gender-related issues.
The Care Inspectorate guidelines state that children who have a trans identity should be allowed to use the toilets and bathrooms allocated to the opposite sex, claiming that such facilities are only sex-segregated due to ‘social convention’.
“The provision of gendered facilities such as toilets is social convention. There is no law in Scotland about this. In the community, there is increasing provision of gender neutral facilities, which enhances accessibility. When considering the use of facilities, ask the young person about the facilities they wish to use and if they have any concerns, respect the young person’s gender identity...”
Shockingly, the advice also recommends that trans identified young people should be able to share bedrooms with their peers of the opposite sex - those who ‘share their gender identity’ as the guidance erroneously spins it - pending a risk assessment.
“If a transgender young person wants to share a room with other young people who share their gender identity, they should be able to do so as long as the rights of, and risks to, all those involved are considered and respected.”
Many of the children and young people in care will have suffered abuse, trauma and/or mental health issues. They should not be expected or asked to share intimate spaces and sleeping accommodation with members of the opposite sex. This is a huge safeguarding fail as well as denying young people in care basic privacy and dignity.
The guidance urges staff not to ‘deny the identity’ of children who say they are transgender but makes clear that the perceived reality of a child must always be endorsed.
“Don’t dismiss what they tell you, deny their identity or tell them they are ‘confused’ or ‘it’s just a phase’. Ask what name and pronoun you should use to address them – check if that’s all the time or in certain circumstances.”
(Presumably, such affirmation will also demand that the other children and young people at the facility participate in the delusion and will have to use the new names and pronouns of the trans-identified child?)
The guidance advises that care staff should affirm and use the names and pronouns which gender confused children choose for themselves, effectively allowing them to socially transition.
“It is important that staff understand there are different ways to transition from one gender to another. This can include dressing differently, changing name, changing pronouns, medically transitioning or changing sex characteristics.”
In March the British Medical Journal published an editorial by Kamran Abbasi about the treatment of gender dysphoria in young people. It criticised the ‘affirmation only’ model, for which, it says, ‘the evidence base is weak’.
The Cass Review Interim Report, which was published over a year ago, highlighted significant concerns about the treatment of children with gender issues, including the limitations of the ‘affirmation-only’ approach. Social transition, it says, ‘is not a neutral act’ and can significantly impact a child’s ‘psychological functioning’.
In England and Wales, the Department for Education (DfE) is poised to issue a warning to schools that allowing pupils to use the names and pronouns of the opposite sex can negatively impact their health and wellbeing.
Yet Scotland’s Care Inspectorate has chosen to ignore all of the ever-burgeoning evidence and expert advice that social transition is potentially harmful.
Of course, the guidance makes no reference whatsoever to the Cass Report. It does, however, refer to documents published by Stonewall and includes several links to Stonewall’s website in its ‘useful resources’ section.
In 2020 the Care Inspectorate became a Stonewall Diversity Champion and in 2022 it received the Bronze Employer Award in Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index.
The Care Inspectorate consulted with LGBT Youth Scotland (LGBTYS) in the production of these new transgender guidelines.
LGBTYS lobbies for gender self ID and the transition of gender confused kids. In January 2021 it was reported that, thanks to LGBTYS ‘guidance’, Scottish teachers were reporting parents to local authorities for ‘failing to support a transgender child’. In some cases, such action even resulted in intervention by social services.
These referrals were the result of guidance issued to schools by LGBTYS in 2017 which states that if parents are struggling to come to terms with their child’s ‘gender identity’, teachers should ensure they support the child in school and may also wish to contact their local authority. In other words, LGBTYS advised schools that, regardless of a parent’s decision regarding their own child, teachers should affirm the child’s gender identity and even inform on families to the social services.
In December 2022 LGBTYS referred itself to the authorities after two young men alleged that they were groomed and sexually exploited by staff at the group when they were children. A few weeks later, a former LGBTYS volunteer made allegations about the lack of child safeguarding measures in place while he was working there.
‘Justin’ (who wishes to remain anonymous) told Reduxx that he witnessed various alarming situations while working as a volunteer at LGBTYS. Firstly, he said that unpaid and untrained volunteers were doing much of the direct work with minors. Furthermore, he alleges that, while attending an event in Glasgow, he and a female volunteer witnessed an adult male volunteer behaving inappropriately with two teenage service users who were aged around 14-16. When Justin reported this incident, LGBTYS managers did not consider the male volunteer’s behavior a risk and even allowed him to stay on at the event for the remainder of the weekend.
Justin came to believe that the focus of LGBTYS was not the well-being of children and young people but the making of money. He described the charity as a ‘well-funded pressure group’ and said that its managers, “Used the life experiences of the vulnerable people in their care to keep getting funding to continue their ‘work’”.
Yet the Care Inspectorate deems LGBTYS an appropriate organisation to offer advice about vulnerable kids in the social care system.
Only a few months ago, the co-author of the Tavistock’s only comprehensive patient audit spoke about the report he helped to write.
In 2002 David Freedman co-authored a clinical audit of the first 124 young people referred to the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). His subsequent report stated that “High percentages of mental and physical health problems in the families of children and adolescents referred” could be contributing to their gender identity issues. It recorded that more than a quarter of the patients had spent time in the care system.
Hannah Barnes’ book, Time to Think, was published earlier this year and, with it, further revelations about the failures in the treatment of gender distressed children at the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).
Time to Think revealed that GIDS clinicians, “Ignored evidence that 97.5 per cent of children seeking sex changes had autism, depression or other problems that might have explained their unhappiness”.
Furthermore, the book also suggests that children referred to GIDS were far more likely to have spent time in care, to have a father who is a registered sex offender, to have lost a parent through death or separation or to have more than five ‘associated features’ such as an eating disorder, anxiety, depression, abuse, self-harm or bullying.
All the evidence shows that vulnerable children - those in the care system, those who’ve suffered abuse, those with mental health issues, those on the autism spectrum etc - are massively over-represented amongst gender dysphoric youth. The Care Inspectorate seems intent on pushing gender confused kids in the care system down a path to transition, turning them into lifelong medical patients, without any critical examination of what might be causing their distress.
David Bell, a consultant psychiatrist who became a ‘Tavistock whistle-blower’, said these new guidelines represent ‘a significant failure of safeguarding’ by the Care Inspectorate.
“Children with a conflict about gender and sexual identity need to be treated with thought and understanding.
Many of these children will have a history of abuse, trauma, depression and major family issues. Just referring to them as trans and sending them off down a medical pathway risks causing them more harm.
Given the evidence we now have, this guidance is quite shocking and has the potential to be very damaging.”
Kids in care are already vulnerable and marginalised. They need someone in their corner to protect and defend them. An ideologically captured organisation seemingly more concerned about adherence to dogma than the safety and wellbeing of the children in its care is clearly not up to the job.
Usual madness in Scotland. The Greens (now in ‘government’ with the SNP) have a madwoman among their number - Maggie Chapman - who thinks children as young as eight know if they’re trans! This in a country where a rapist wasn’t jailed because he was under 25 when he committed the crime because seemingly your brain doesn’t mature until you’re 25! This is the sort of shit we have to put up with up here.
As KJK says, this is profound child abuse. When this is over, there needs to be some accountability for what the ideologues are doing. Heads need to roll. In the meantime, we need to follow the money. How much are these people getting for pushing such vile and incomprehensible insanity?