Now Reading: Report claims state failed to protect children in care ‘from the harms of transition’
- 01
Report claims state failed to protect children in care ‘from the harms of transition’
Report claims state failed to protect children in care ‘from the harms of transition’
A new report by Policy Exchange has revealed the scale of access which activist groups such as Mermaid have had to vulnerable children in the care of the state. In the last 48 months, 17 councils had been members of a Stonewall scheme, while 12 had paid activist groups “to provide training”.
The devastating report – which is rightly sympathetic to the extremely difficult task which individual careworkers have in striking the right balance in responding to the needs of vulnerable youth – concludes that the care system, which “in many places, [is] ideologically captured” is “failing gender questioning children”.
In 2023-24 Staffordshire County Council spent £3,075 on gender-related training by the activist organisation Mermaids. The amount is small, but the impact of exposing some of the most vulnerable children to a group such as Mermaid, which by December 2022 was already the subject of a statutory inquiry, is enormous, raising serious concerns around safeguarding in our local councils.
During this period, Staffordhire County Council was under the control of the Conservative Party.
The Charity Commission, according to news reports from that time, “began investigating Mermaids in September [2023], after reports about the supply of chest-binding devices to teenagers”.
Then in December 2023, “a formal inquiry [was] launched because of ‘newly identified issues’ with Mermaids’ governance and management”.
Zachary Marsh, Research Fellow at Policy Exchange and co-author of the report, said, “Instead of following best practice as established by the Cass Review and the Supreme Court, councils have been wasting taxpayer money on training from activist organisations with views far beyond the mainstream.”
“The victims have been vulnerable children in care who have been inadequately protected from the harms of transition.”
The report adds to the exposition of the prevalence of gender ideology across councils. The fact that the ideology was adopted and endorsed by both the major parties – even after regulators had started asking questions – goes towards explaining its prevalence in our public sector. It also explains the near electoral annihilation of the Conservative Party.
Staffordshire County Council is now under the control of Reform UK.
