An accident waiting to happen...
- Administrator
- Mar 30
- 5 min read
When will our public regulatory bodies stop choosing harmful ideology over safeguarding?
Introduction:
In our 31st August 2024 blog, ScotPAG criticised the Care Inspectorate Guidance for children and young people’s services on the inclusion of transgender including non-binary young people
We drew attention to the fact that the guidance was developed on the basis of advice from LGBT Youth Scotland, which has repeatedly had safeguarding concerns raised about some of its staff and volunteers. We noted that it promoted a false ideology across the majority of Scottish schools, and encouraged parents, and everyone with a duty of care, to write and complain to the Scottish Government. To make this easier, we provided a template letter for public use.
But what has happened over the past year since the guidance was published? As usual, precisely nothing. Children’s safeguarding continues to be compromised, professionals continue to be misled, including the likelihood of being advised to break the law, and families and children continue to be poorly served. We think it is worth revisiting why the guidance for children and young people’s services on the inclusion of transgender including non-binary young people is a complete dereliction of duty of the part of the Care Inspectorate.
The following blog is our critique, written by an expert in the field of childcare:
Why the Care Inspectorate Guidance for children and young people’s services on the inclusion of transgender including non-binary young people is
an accident waiting to happen
The Care Inspectorate is evidently responding to what is a complex and challenging area that cuts across health, wellbeing, education, social and cultural issues, not to mention the political landscape. Contentious as this may be, it is important to note that the whole document is solely based on one report and a survey carried out by LGBT Youth Scotland. The findings of that report are confusingly summarised and unclear. As a result, the guidance presents a singular and biased approach.
The guidance is written from a presumption of acceptance of the concept of ‘transgender and non-binary children and young people’. In law, this categorisation does not exist as a protected characteristic and there is no evidence of the existence of the concept of gender ideology. In fact there is extensive research and commentary which is critical of the concept of gender identity, which is the ideological basis for the presumption of the existence of ‘transgender’ and ‘non-binary’ children and teenagers. There are decades of research by psychologists and psychoanalysts such as Piaget, Vygotsky, Bowlby, Bandura and many others, who have described the natural development process through infancy to adolescence, involving the exploration of the self and sexuality, and the process of maturation into adulthood. For most people, the natural challenges of development are navigated with support and understanding, thus creating resilience, and facilitating a sense of belonging, safety, and acceptance in society.
For those young people who adopt transgender ideology as a solution to feeling different or as an attempt to avoid the difficulties of adolescence and young adulthood, there is often an enticing pull towards belonging to a peer group which offers a perceived solution to their difficulties. Along with the influences of social media and the resulting social contagion, however, there are real risks that vulnerable youngsters become convinced that they can change sex.
The Care Inspectorate guidance buys in to the unproven ideology of gender identity. It makes no space for querying this contested belief, and by implication for young people who do not agree that males and females can change sex. As for children and teenagers who may develop into gay adults, it fails to recognise their existence and their needs. For agencies navigating this issue, and in particular for those supporting those who are care experienced, there must be a fine line to tread between acknowledging young people’s feelings and considering how best to support, address or challenge them where appropriate.
One important example of ignoring the needs of care experienced girls for example, is to be found on page 8 of the document, which discusses social convention about toilet and private spaces. In legal terms, this is simply wrong. The Equality Act (2010) explicitly states the need to ensure single sex toilets in a range of public spaces. Such a proclamation is reflective of the benign and reductive approach that transgender activists pursue, it is not what is to be expected from a regulatory public body. Agencies, including the Care Inspectorate, have a responsibility to protect those care experienced young people, especially given that they are statistically far more likely to have experienced abuse and sexual abuse. By assuming that toilets, changing, and sleeping facilities should be shared based on self-identification, the document completely compromises the safeguarding of vulnerable children and teenagers.
It is interesting to note that the guidance refers to self-identification and gender dysphoria interchangeably, without proper consideration and explanation; this is entirely unhelpful and misleading.
Page 10 of the document contains what can only be described as an outrageous statement in which the guidance advises that staff should help young people to explore options for support, including the consideration of being referred to Scotland's Sandyford 'gender' Clinic. We assert strongly that It is not within the competency of care staff to advise about medical pathways, interventions, and treatment.
Furthermore, the guidance barely touches on the important point of the Age of Legal Capacity (which, in any case, is quite hard to find in the document). An extensive perusal of the guidance eventually takes the reader to the information that access to hormones and surgery are not available before the age of 16 years of age; yet there is, implicit in the guidance, the ‘product placement’ and support of gender identity aimed at children under sixteen years of age. Currently, the law in Scotland is under appeal via the Scotland Act by the UK Government. This means that the age for being treated as a transgender patient is currently eighteen years old.
Finally, the guidance expects staff to engage in transgender-affirmative language and practice for which there is no evidence of efficacy. Such an approach may well be fundamentally in contradiction to a care staff member’s own beliefs which are also protected under the Equality Act. It is therefore imperative, we suggest, that agencies recognise that one group’s rights do not trump another. As if these objections are not enough, the Glossary itself is presented from a single perspective, is inaccurate in places, incomplete in others, and offers no balance of alternative views whatsoever.
This blog was written by a ScotPAG member with over 30 years experience in social work and the NHS, specialising in children and families, social care, residential child care, Women's Aid, and social inclusion
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