By David Jones*

Recently, I went to the wedding of a young woman who used to be in care at the home I worked in.

Jasmine had told me she regarded this as a fitting occasion to acknowledge some important events in her life, which she saw as vital in shaping her. She also wanted to share this celebration with those people whose interventions she would never forget.

One such intervention had involved me.

The incident

I’d seen a fellow member of staff caress Jasmine’s leg as she was helping him to clear the dinner table. While I was trying to take in what I’d just witnessed, an act so sudden and lasting barely a couple of seconds, Jasmine had began screaming uncontrollably and throwing cups and plates at my colleague.

He  retreated across the room as the poor girl absolutely lost it.

I ran to Jasmine and put my arms around her. She was shaking like a leaf. I told the colleague to take a break.”

I know what I saw, and at the disciplinary hearing later that month, his union representative attempted to paint Jasmine in the worst possible light: a feckless 15-year-old and a drunk (she’d bought a can of lager earlier that day), someone not to be trusted and an entitled attention seeker.

It was appalling and distressing to hear. Thankfully, Jasmine wasn’t required to attend the hearing.

‘I know what I saw’

Most of the staff at the home supported me, but to my shock, some didn’t. But I know what I saw. As for the colleague involved, he insisted that I’d got it wrong, that his touching Jasmine’s leg was merely an innocent, friendly gesture. He was also very keen to remind me of the risks I was taking, how whistleblowers often lost their position and damaged their reputation.

He was sacked shortly after the hearing. I felt massively relieved and vindicated, not just for myself, but for Jasmine. The next time she saw me on shift at the home, she quietly thanked me, adding: “You had my back. This is why trust matters.” I could have cried on the spot, and did shed a few tears when she talked about this at her wedding.

But the issues this experience brought to the fore are exactly what looking after children and young people in care is all about.

The importance of being believed

Being believed and trusted are crucial to our sense of self and identity. Just how much more acutely must this imperative present for a vulnerable, looked-after kid, a kid who might have their identities challenged and compromised by family members and authority figures? In a care setting, it is so easy for a young person to feel cancelled.

In turn, being able to believe and trust others can prove hugely problematic. Having to navigate what can be a psychological minefield is hardly conducive to a youngster’s emotional stability and development.

It is the duty of staff – some of whom need reminding – to show respect to the kids in their care; to let them know they have worth and are valued. I have seen and been told about enough bad practice and it’s unforgivable.

‘Attitudes show how rotten the care system can be’

The attitudes of the sacked member of staff, the union representative and some colleagues epitomised the rejection of any notion of the welfare of the young person coming first.

In fact, this episode proved a textbook example of just how rotten the care system can be when a youngster is actually mocked and derided, precisely because he or she is in care.

An older, happy and settled Jasmine can now reflect calmly on events.

“I remember being so shocked when he touched me,” she explains. “But at the same time I also felt terrified, because it occurred to me that I probably wouldn’t be believed. How could the word of a kid possibly trump that of a member of staff?”

The social worker’s view

Jasmine’s social worker, Sharon, recalls the disgust she felt at the time. “The incident itself was bad enough, but the things the union rep said about Jasmine were beyond the pale.

To vilify a child in care in this way, in order to try and save the skin of an employee, really highlights how the care system gets it badly wrong at times.”

“This case also highlighted an ethos that can still suffer from what I call faulty wiring. In my 20 years as a social worker, I’ve made countless visits to children’s homes, and the attitudes of some workers really have made me pause.”

‘You put your job on the line’

“The fact that I was believed almost took my breath away,” Jasmine recalls. “I knew that you would be in my corner, but beyond that I had no confidence that the right outcome would be reached.

“You put your job on the line and I could have been moved to another home, my name not worth a fig. I thought the system, and the odds, were stacked against us.

“Looking back now, no care system worth the name should make a kid feel like that.”

The author is a freelance journalist and former residential child car worker. His name has been changed.

An NHS trust has been ordered to pay one of its social workers £20,000 after an employment tribunal ruled she had suffered “injury to “feelings” after blowing the whistle on practice concerns.

Sonia Appleby reported several concerns to managers at Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust about practice at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), a specialist national service for children needing support with their gender identity.

The tribunal found Appleby suffered “detriment” in response to making five “protected disclosures” – issues raised by workers in the public interest – which is contrary to the Employment Rights Act 1996.

The GIDS assesses young people who have difficulties with their gender identity, provides therapeutic support and, in some cases, refers them to other hospitals for treatment with puberty blockers to give them more time to reflect on their gender identity. They may then receive cross-sex hormones as part of a gender transition.

Rising caseloads

Appleby, a social worker and psychoanalytical psychotherapist, has been the trust’s named safeguarding lead for children since 2004, a role that involves advising the board on child protection, strategically and in relation to day-to-day practice. She first reported concerns about GIDS in 2016, highlighting deficiencies in case recording and warning that rising referrals were having a distressing impact. GIDS’s caseloads had been rising since it became a specialised NHS service in 2009, a trend that accelerated when it became a national service in 2016.

Appleby made her first two protected disclosures in October and November 2017, respectively, in emails to her then manager – trust medical director Dr Rob Senior. These reported concerns from GIDS staff including a culture that made it difficult to report safeguarding concerns for fear of being labelled transphobic, and that some young children were “being actively encouraged to be transgender without effective scrutiny of their circumstances”. She also cited reports of the service’s director, Dr Polly Carmichael, being unwilling to listen to the concerns.

However, Senior did not respond, leading Appleby to forward both messages to him in January 2018, on return from a period of sick leave.

This led to a meeting with Carmichael in February – which constituted the third protected disclosure – at which they discussed her emails to Senior. Appleby subsequently emailed Carmichael with a record of the meeting and proposed actions, including that she would talk to GIDS’ safeguarding lead, Garry Richardson, on strengthening safeguarding leadership at the service. However, Carmichael did not respond.

‘Jimmy Savile’ remark

In a subsequent conversation with Richarsdson, Appleby warned that “if they were not careful a Jimmy Savile type situation could arise”, in terms of “an institution turning a blind eye to what was in front of them”. This was a reference Appleby routinely used in training sessions to illustrate the importance of staff vigilance regarding child safeguarding. Richardson, however, interpreted this as an attack on colleagues as being complicit in abuse.

Through the rest of 2018, Appleby raised further safeguarding concerns reported to her by staff, with Senior, Richardson and the Tavistock’s then director of children, young adults and families, Sally Hodges. These included concerns about children’s ability to give informed consent to medication, premature use of puberty blockers, high caseloads and staff feeling unable to raise concerns. Analysis by Appleby also found low levels of safeguarding supervision at GIDS, and of safeguarding referrals from it to other agencies.

Also that year, Dr David Bell, an adult psychiatrist and Tavistock staff governor, wrote a report to his fellow trust governors saying the GIDS “as it now functions and children’s needs are being met in a woeful (sic) inadequate manner and some will live on with the damaging consequences”.

Appleby asked Bell to remove the opening paragraph of the report, which said that she had “been closely involved throughout preparation and has read and discuss with me this final version to which she has made a number of very important contributions”, but he had already submitted it.

The tribunal found that, while Appleby agreed safeguarding was not being properly handled at GIDS, she disagreed with the tone of the report, which came across as an attack on the service’s management.

Dr Dinesh Sinha replaced Senior in 2018 as trust medical director and conducted a review of GIDS, during which Appleby made her fifth protected disclosure, details of an exit interview in which a staff member referred to a “climate of fear” at GIDS. Appleby’s reference to Jimmy Savile was raised with Sinha twice, by Richardson and another member of staff, during his review.

In July 2019, after Appleby’s return to work following another period of ill-health, she was asked to attend an informal meeting with Sinha regarding GIDS. However, an HR staff member was present and Sinha told her she would be receiving a letter about the Savile comment that would remain on her file, but without providing context as the remarks were made in confidence. The letter said that the comparison had made a colleague feel “very disrespected” and that, though this was not a formal procedure, Sinha warned he may need to investigate Appleby formally if there were further such reports.

 ‘The sense of injustice is obvious’

The tribunal ruled that this constituted a detriment to Appleby, for which the trust must pay her £12,500 in compensation.

Despite Sinha saying it was an informal meeting, the tribunal found Appleby was right to have seen it as a disciplinary process, and the outcome was, in some ways, “worse than a disciplinary warning”, as it was not time-limited and there was no right of appeal. There had also been no investigation; had there been one, Sinha would have found that the Savile example was one Appleby used routinely in training.

“The letter on her file contained an explicit threat that it would be taken into account later if there was a recurrence of an obscure event,” said the judgment.

“She had no opportunity to clear her name or get another view, as would happen if there was an appeal, and it was to remain on her file indefinitely, and it still is on her file. The resulting sense of injustice is obvious. Anyone would lose sleep over this.”

The tribunal said Dr Sinha’s treatment of Appleby “can only be explained as materially influenced by her disclosures, which were viewed by him (and others) as unwarranted interference, overstepping her proper role”.

The second area in which the tribunal found detriment to Appleby was in relation to staff being discouraged from referring safeguarding matters to her, despite her being the trust safeguarding children lead. Though nothing was put in writing, the tribunal found “there was a message being communicated to GIDS staff by Dr Carmichael at the time of the Sinha review, that they should not take safeguarding issues to the claimant, not because she was not a clinician familiar with the complexities (as had been suggested to some staff when they took concerns to the speak up champion) but because she was hostile to GIDS”.

“That must have been hurtful, and must have made carrying on with her duties painful and difficult, especially when the trust denied that had occurred, and was asserting that she bore the responsibility for any difficulty,” said the tribunal, who ordered the trust to pay Appleby another £7,500 for this detriment.

Trust to learn from ‘difficult situation’

In response to the ruling,  the trust said it “wholeheartedly supports staff raising concerns and has strengthened its mechanisms for doing so in recent years”.

“It is important that all staff can raise concerns without fear of detriment and have them properly addressed,” a spokesperson said.

“There is always room for improvement and learning from these difficult situations and we are looking carefully at what this decision means for us and what we should take from it going forward, including how we best support our staff and protect our patients.”

‘Last two years were brutal’

Appleby opened a crowdfunding page to help cover the legal costs of her case and posted a response to the ruling on the website last week.

She said the decision to instigate proceedings against her employer was a “nearly overwhelming experience” but that she was “very pleased with the outcome”.

“I want to thank you, my witnesses, my legal team and all of the very many people who have supported me during the tribunal process,” she said.

“The last two years, as a claimant and employee, have been increasingly brutal.

“However, I want to focus on you and to express my sincere thanks for your humanity and your financial support, without which I would never have been able to bring my case.

“Standing by me as you all did, supported the primacy of childhood, keeping our children safe, and hopefully sending a message that those who strive to do their jobs are not miscreants.”

A doctor who had warned about problems at the clinic where Peter Connelly (Baby P) was seen days before his death has been hired as a whistleblowing advisor by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Paediatrician Kim Holt flagged up concerns to senior management in 2006 about understaffing and poor record keeping at St Ann’s clinic, part of Great Ormond Street Hospital. In 2007, Baby P died just three days after being seen by a locum doctor at the same clinic.

Holt started her temporary role as a professional advisor for the CQC last week by leading a workshop with people who have whistleblowing experience, who discussed the issues they have faced and the barriers that can prevent staff from raising concerns.

“The feedback will help us to develop our new approach to regulating health and adult social care services, which will include assessing how providers listen to and treat whistleblowers,” said a statement on the CQC’s website.

“It will also give us a better understanding of the experiences of staff who raise concerns and the issues whistleblowers face.”

Dr Holt said: “I hope my own journey as a whistleblower and my experience of speaking with many others who have raised concerns will help CQC develop new ways of responding.”