A whistleblower who raised concerns about children’s safety at an NHS gender clinic has been awarded £20,000 in an employment tribunal.
Sonia Appleby is child safeguarding lead at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids). The clinic advises young people struggling with their gender identity, and is the only NHS-run clinic of its kind in England.
Her role requires her to protect children from mistreatment and to ensure children’s health and development is not impaired.
She told the tribunal that a number of staff had brought concerns to her about high numbers of children being enrolled at Gids, and they were worried that “some young children are being actively encouraged to be transgender without effective scrutiny of their circumstances”.
She made six protected disclosures between 2017 and 2019.
These included concerns about a private GP, Dr Helen Webberley who staff alleged had been issuing puberty blockers to children being assessed by Gids or who were on its waiting list.
Another disclosure focused on how the increased workload meant staff were too overworked to consider safeguarding issues in individual cases, with a recommendation that better record-keeping provisions were put in place to assist “clear thinking”.
Whistleblowing
Appleby reported these concerns to her manager, but the tribunal heard that bosses responded by trying to prevent her from carrying out her safeguarding role.
She said that Tavistock and Portman trust managers sidelined her, damaging her professional reputation and describing it as a “full-blown organisational assault”.
In July 2019, Appleby was asked to attend an “informal meeting” to discuss events with the trust’s medical director, Dinesh Sinah.
In the meeting, she was told a letter would be placed on her file regarding a comment she had made to a colleague that the clinic could become involved in a “Jimmy Savile-type situation” because senior staff were ignoring concerns about children being put forward for treatments without full consideration.
A BBC Newsnight documentary last year also uncovered leaked documents claiming that concerns about patient welfare were shut down.
The trust denied treating her unfairly, but conceded that there were issues with its procedure, such as not giving Appleby any notice ahead of a disciplinary meeting, not carrying out an investigation and not giving her the opportunity to appeal.
The tribunal judge Sarah Goodman concluded that she had been subjected to “quasi-disciplinary treatment”, and that there was “obvious unfairness” in the way she was dealt with.
In a statement on the Crowdjustice website, which helped to fund her tribunal claim, Appleby said she was “naturally very pleased” with the tribunal decision.
“As you all can appreciate, making a decision to instigate proceedings against my employer was a significant and nearly overwhelming experience,” she said.
“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. The last two years, as a claimant and employee, have been increasingly brutal.
“Standing by me as you all did, supporting the primacy of childhood, keeping our children safe, and hopefully sending a message that those who strive to do their jobs are not miscreants. I am and will remain indebted to you all.”
Commenting on the judgement, a spokesperson for the Trust said: “The Tavistock and Portman 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.
“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.”
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