LGBT activist tells teachers to ditch normal safeguarding

Parents should not be told about their child’s gender struggles, even if teachers feel it is vital for the child’s mental health, claims the Chair of the ‘Ban Conversion Therapy’ Campaign.

Jayne Ozanne, who heads the coalition that includes controversial groups Stonewall and Mermaids, explained on Times Radio that only with a child’s explicit consent should such safeguarding concerns be raised with parents.

Sunday Morning host Kate McCann asked: “There are some circumstances in which a teacher would want to let a parent know if a child was going through something that they thought was going to be difficult for them, that they thought might affect their mental health.

“If they thought the parents actually probably could help and be part of that that would surely be the right thing to do, wouldn't it?”

Well of course it would! But that wasn’t the activist’s response…

Ozanne replied: “Well, I think the key issue there is consent isn't it? It’s having a conversation with the child and asking if they are open to them involving the parent. But to do it without the child's consent, I think is deeply concerning.”

But what about the likely scenario when a child would rather their parents didn’t know, yet the school thinks otherwise?

This is the very sort of scenario for which schools have safeguarding policies. Parents sometimes need to be told about teachers’ concerns for their child, even if it goes against the child’s wishes. Parents know their child best and have responsibility for their care.

Importantly, keeping parents informed is not simply for their own sake, but for the safety of their children. Parents must be kept aware of the particular difficulties their children are facing, so that they can be properly looked after.

To seek to exclude parents shows a wilful disregard for standard child safeguarding practices. It appears these vocal campaigners will stop at nothing to dismiss all voices but their own. Even if that means keeping secrets from parents.

This thinking has been a consistent refrain of the campaign for the unnecessary ‘conversion therapy ban’.

Campaign spokesman and Scottish Greens councillor Blair Anderson astonishingly asserts: “Forced outing of children to families will take us back to an age of state-sanctioned conversion therapy”.

Anderson previously attacked Sir Keir Starmer when he said children shouldn’t be able to change gender without their parent’s consent. Anderson wildly claimed: “Depending on your parents’ “consent” to be the sexuality or gender that you are is like Conversion Therapy 101”.

He seems to think that if parents fail to automatically affirm their child in their chosen gender, they are carrying out ‘conversion therapy’ on them. By that logic, if a child says they are the opposite gender, parents must unquestioningly go along with it.

We mustn’t paint every parent as a potential abuser. But that’s precisely what some want a ‘conversion therapy’ law to do. Activists are demanding a law which reaches into schools and family homes, catching “casual conversations” and everyday religious beliefs.

In almost every case, children do not need to be protected from their own parents. But in every single case, children do need to be protected from dangerous ideology. Parents must be free to help their children feel comfortable in their own skin.