Target reached!
If we raise more than our initial target, we will also send copies of Time to Think ...
Sponsor a copy of Hannah Barnes's Time To Think
Brighton, United Kingdom
Aim
Please sponsor a copy of Hannah Barnes's book, Time To Think, for every Brighton and Hove city councillor.
Time to think again about safeguarding for children with gender distress in Brighton & Hove
We want to give every Brighton & Hove councillor a copy of Time to Think, a book that details the journey that led to the closure of England’s only specialist NHS clinic for gender-confused children. Our hope is to start a respectful, informed and open discussion about best practice for our city's schools.
The Gender Identity Development Service, known as GIDS, was England’s only NHS clinic for children expressing distress related to gender identity. It has been ordered to close following an 'inadequate' rating from the Care Quality Commission and the finding by an independent review that its service model was “not a safe or viable long-term option”. Hannah Barnes’s book, Time to Think, sets out how, over a period of more than 15 years, GIDS (and its parent organisation the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust) failed to respond to concerns raised by clinicians who could see that young people were being harmed.
The Cass Review noted that there is a lack of professional consensus “and in many instances a lack of open discussion, about the extent to which gender incongruence in childhood and adolescence can be an inherent and immutable phenomenon for which transition is the best option for the individual, or a more fluid and temporal response to a range of developmental, social, and psychological factors.” (Cass interim report, p.17)
What The Guardian said about Time to Think:
"A journalist at the BBC’s Newsnight, Barnes has based her account on more than 100 hours of interviews with Gids’ clinicians, former patients, and other experts, many of whom are quoted by name. It comes with 59 pages of notes, plentiful well-scrutinised statistics, and it is scrupulous and fair-minded."
We believe that everyone responsible for children’s and young people’s services should take time to think about the implications of what has happened at GIDS and take steps to avoid similar failings in the organisations for which they are responsible.
Brighton & Hove Council’s Trans Inclusion Toolkit for schools advises schools to support and facilitate the social transition of “trans pupils”. Schools are encouraged to “Follow the lead of the child”. However, as the Cass Review found, social transition is not a neutral act. Rather, it can contribute to what is known as ‘diagnostic overshadowing’ – a focus on gender issues alone, which can lead to other complex needs being neglected.
The Cass review found that the “predominantly … affirmative, non-exploratory approach” of some clinicians at GIDS was “often driven by child and parent expectations and the extent of social transition that has developed” (p. 17)
Despite a poor evidence base, some clinicians prescribed puberty-blocking drugs after very brief assessments. Puberty blockers were supposed to give children time to think, but 98% of those prescribed them later underwent irreversible hormone treatment.
Mothers, teachers and other school staff attending our women’s support group have observed that distress relating to gender identity is commonly experienced by female teenagers, a group which also experiences unacceptable levels of sexual harassment (both in person and on social media), body image pressure and unhealthy relationship dynamics influenced by pornography and other male-dominated online discourse. Girls on the autistic spectrum and those who are sexually attracted to other girls are also disproportionately likely to identify as trans.
We need a much more open discussion about how best to safeguard the students in our city’s schools. It is our hope that Hannah Barnes's book Time To Think will give councillors an opportunity to think more critically about the policies our council endorses.
We want to send a copy of this book to every councillor to start a respectful, informed and open discussion about best practice for our city's children. Please help us raise the funds to do this!
Each copy of the book costs £19.50 to buy and send, so we need to raise £1,053 to send a copy to all 54 Brighton & Hove councillors.
Please help us raise this money! We know times are hard but every little helps.
If we raise more than our target, we will also send copies to the heads of governors of local sixth form colleges, secondary schools and primary schools.
If you want us to include a personal message to your ward councillor, please add a comment with your donation, including your name and the ward where you live (check your ward here)
#DoNoHarm #SistersSalon #Brighton #BetterPoliciesBetterSchools
This project successfully funded on 17th August 2023