Top social worker accuses care bosses of causing ‘untold harm’ over gender ideology

Scotland’s top social worker is accusing care bosses of causing “untold harm” by abandoning child protection principals rather than standing against gender ideology.

Maggie Mellon says officials failed to protect children by ignoring existing equality laws and ordering staff to impose “harmful gender ideology” rather than risk criticism from trans lobby groups.

The former director of children’s services Children 1st and ex-chairwoman of the Scottish Child Law Centre said: “Care bosses failed to uphold existing equality law and stood by while social workers who bravely challenged ideology were bullied and lost jobs.

“The Scottish Care Inspectorate and other government-funded bodies all signed up to imposing belief in gender identity on social workers, and on vulnerable service users, claiming that the law supported this.

“Social workers were advised by these and other powerful bodies that they must offer automatic ‘affirmation’ of gender identity, even in very young children whose parents or adopters were claiming to have identified this, including those with serious and complex psychiatric conditions. Unbelievably, we were also asked to accept the claimed gender identity of serious sex offenders.”

The respected social work expert said officials promoting ideology caused “far reaching problems for children, particularly the most vulnerable”.

The Supreme Court ruled two weeks ago that the legal definition of a woman is a biological woman, not a trans woman. The case, brought by the three founding members of campaign group For Women Scotland aided by Scottish Lesbians and Sex Matters, also ruled that when the term “woman” is used in the Equality Act it means a biological woman, “sex” means biological sex, and men who are born male do not have the right to use women-only spaces or compete in women’s sport even if they identify as a woman or hold a Gender Recognition Certificate.

The ruling is sparking major change with public bodies and sports authorities now forced to change policy or face action for breaking the law over instances such as allowing trans competitors or failing to provide women-only changing and toilet facilities.

Mellon said: “The risks of confusing sex and gender were not acknowledged as social work and health and education leaders glibly accepted and promoted “gender identity” with an alacrity that they must now be required to explain.

“It is deeply worrying that despite the clarity of last month’s Supreme Court judgement and what should have been an immediate retraction of contrary guidance, social workers are still reporting intimidation, while those who speak out continue finding themselves facing disciplinary investigation and sanctions including dismissal.

“What we are experiencing is the abandonment of the basic principles of public protection, and the duty to ‘first do no harm’.

“Over the last nine years, a number of us determinedly challenged false and harmful gender ideology policies and guidance in social work, health and education, particularly those which stated children should be taught that they might have been assigned the wrong gender at birth, or were trapped in the wrong body.

“The harms these policies caused must now be acknowledged and corrected, along with reaffirming the importance of biological sex in social work, health and education by those who have been responsible for so dangerously rejecting it. Real leadership is needed now to correct the harm done.”

Mellon warned that nobody knows how many children in care have been encouraged to socially and physically “transition” from their biological sex to an imaginary gender identity.