By Carolyn Brown and Mary Howden
WRN Scotland and ScotPAG’s FOI Report (August 2024)
In light of the Cass Report (CR) recommendations, published April 2024, Women’s Rights Network (WRN) Scotland and ScotPAG collaborated to find out what action has been taken by our local councils to implement the CR recommendations. Our focus was with the CR’s particular concerns about education and social work.
The CR advised that assessment and support of gender questioning children should be ‘holistic’ and not driven by a “contested belief”. We aimed to find out what council education services and social work services had done to address these concerns.
Education and Social Work Services Guidance Applied Currently in Scotland
In education, “Supporting transgender young people in schools: guidance for Scottish schools” has been available to schools since 12th August 2021. The Care Inspectorate “Guidance for children and young people’s services on the inclusion of transgender including non-binary young people” for social work services has been available since May 2024.
Both WRN Scotland and ScotPAG are agreed that the evidence to date from the CR and international research is that the source of the huge increase in gender questioning children, stems from the known phenomena of social contagion, media influence and “product placement” of the term ‘transgender’ within schools and our public services. It is clear that our health, education and social services should remove gender affirming and social transition policies from all institutions with immediate effect. For the sake of the emotional wellbeing of all our children and staff, the concept that any individual can change sex should be removed from all aspects of our public institutions. The CR states:
“…no individual journey begins at the front door of the NHS, rather in the child’s
home, family and school environment. The importance of what happens in school cannot be under-estimated; this applies to all aspects of children’s health and wellbeing. Schools have been grappling with how they should respond when a pupil says that they want to socially transition in the school setting. For this reason, it is important that school guidance is able to utilise some of the principles and evidence from the Review” (12.6 p158).3
What Our FOI Report Found
1. All councils reported that they are currently referring their education and social
services to the respective Scottish Government and Care Inspectorate
guidance relating to children who call themselves “transgender”.
2. No Council has undertaken a critical review of their policies in light of the CR. In effect, all Councils continue to support the gender affirming approach embedded in both education and social work guidance promoted by the Scottish Government.
3. The Scottish Government has chosen to promote ideologically driven guidance for schools and social work services instead of developing guidance informed by
evidence-based research. As a result, the Scottish Government has created
safeguarding issues within its public services. WRN Scotland and ScotPAG are
alerting anyone who will listen to our major concerns about the implications that exist with regard to the protection of vulnerable children and teenagers.
WRN Scotland and ScotPAG sent all CEO’S of Councils a copy of our report on 10.09.2024.
To date we have had no response from any Council.
