Tag: cass report

Responses to the UKCP meeting

UKCP – The Board Removal Vote.

As many of you know, The UKCP Board held an online meeting Monday to put its case to members on how to vote in its forthcoming removal election. Over 300 UKCP members are reported to have joined this meeting.

We are listing here the headlines, as we understood them, and below this (in the longer version), quotations from the meeting and links to relevant documents.

As the vote begins we remain extremely concerned about the actions of the UKCP Board and we do not believe that their actions in withdrawing from the MoU have been adequately explained. We believe that some very serious questions remain, and in the absence of receiving answers, despite trying for months, our UKCP cohort continues to call for the removal of the Board and their subsequent replacement with a new team which will restore the UKCP to the MoU (as the current Board restated that it would not do), unless a full and transparent consultative process involving members of all kinds indicates a different course of action.

The headlines from the meeting are:

1.    The UKCP Board states that their figure for triggering the vote is 2% and that that’s low by comparison with other organisations. They stated that the petition achieved this level, just, and inferred that if a higher number had been required, it wouldn’t have been reached. We’d like to respond that TACTT’s open letter stopped being promoted at the point we reached the number of signatures required and a decision was made to submit to UKCP. TACTT is confident that it could have added more signatures, perhaps significantly more, had it continued to seek them.

2.     The UKCP Board states that NCPS supports them in the aim of creating a new, alternative version of the MoU. NCPS has categorically denied this and has now asked UKCP to stop saying it’s true. (Please note that communication from the UKCP to TACTT after the publication of this blog asks us to update. The UKCP is not planning to create a new version of the MoU. We are not sure what they are planning to create, except a regulatory document of some kind that involves conversion therapy. In the meeting they discussed the MoU ‘not going far enough’ and wanting to strengthen this, but it seems that what they are planning to create is not something like the MoU).

3.     The UKCP Board states they had no choice but to withdraw at speed from the MoU and although they knew that this may be seen as a transphobic action, they a) didn’t have time to mitigate the process around this, and b) although they knew it could be perceived as transphobic, they didn’t consider how their action would impact members. They also feel that they are “ethically sensitive” and the right people to remain on the board. However, the Board has also said it discussed this in advance of making the decision with colleagues and some of the member colleges. Which is it? That there was time to engage with several colleges and colleagues, or that this had to be done so fast that there wasn’t time to consider the impact the decision would have?

WHY did the decision have to be so fast?  Can the UKCP categorically state that they have signed no legal settlement that has compelled them to withdraw from the MoU?

4.     The UKCP Board’s original stated reason for withdrawal was about ‘children’. At the meeting the main message seemed to be about ‘insurance premiums’. The Board now states that it had to withdraw the UKCP because of insurance policy premiums (and that their responsibility is to UKCP, with no mention of clients or their members). With respect to stated concerns about the care of children, the UKCP board has claimed that the MoU Secretariat refused to engage on this. There is nothing in the minutes of any UKCP trustee meeting from the last 18 months that suggests this and it has been stated in the meeting on June 17th by an attendee (presumably on the secretariat) via the Q&A panel that the minutes of the MoU meetings do not support this. Whichever way, the MoU was a guideline, rather than a legal document.

5.    The UKCP Board has repeatedly said that they want to hear from LGBTQ+ (and other) voices. TACTT has been trying to engage with UKCP on this matter since November 2023, with no results whatsoever. The UKCP Board also states that it supports the Cass review, which has been widely criticised since its publication, not least by trans people whose voices were systematically excluded from it.

6.    The   UKCP Board stated that the removal of the trustees would destabilise the organisation and that many new developments would have to be ‘put on ice’, yet also claiming that the current Board is new. Irrespective of this seemingly contradictory rhetoric, it must be pointed out that the Board wouldn’t be replaced until new members of a trustee board (also potentially members with experience of being trustees) were in place.

In short: the narrative we have heard seems to be as follows.

They couldn’t tell members the truth, but they’ve also been transparent from the start.

They are against conversion therapy, but they support the Cass Review. This has been widely discredited by leading academics, and was created and managed by a government that explicitly and energetically attempted to destroy the rights of trans people in the UK. This government has refused to bring forward a ban of Conversion Therapy (the Minister who commissioned it celebrated the release of the final Cass report with excited claims of the defeat of the “militant gender lobby”) and the Cass report has been weaponised extensively within the political and media discourse since its release.

They believe in ‘healthy exploratory therapy’ but will not commit to a starting point of stating that trans identities are valid and are as legitimate as cisgender identities. Without this, so-called ‘exploratory therapy’ effectively becomes conversion therapy.

They want to create a new regulatory version of the MoU, but again, will not commit to the standpoint of the original MoU. They didn’t know that the MoU covered children (we ask, why would it not, and why did it take 8 years and having signed the document twice to bring this question – which could have been answered easily and quickly at any stage?) and state that children have age-specific needs. Our response to this? Of course they do, but why does this mean that a well-practised approach of supporting a child to explore their identity – trans, cisgender or anything else – is invalid?. And we point out again that the MoU does not state any particular way of working for either adults or children and young people.

Long version

1: In the interests of expediency, TACTT sent the list of signatures when we knew we had reached the number required. If the number had been higher, we would have continued to share the letter until the higher number was reached.

2: UKCP have withdrawn from the MoU2 and intend to create a regulatory document around conversion therapy. UKCP (Jon Levett, CEO) said in the meeting “We’ve got together a working group which is going to start to meet on a monthly basis to really start to get some momentum on this. So NCPS are very definitely involved, very definitely signed up to this.” Another trustee states “ [we have] form[ed] a working group led by our CEO John Levitt already we’re collaborating with a number of organisations including the British Psychoanalytic Council, the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society and a number of others”

NCPS’s response is “Just to reassure you, the NCPS has re-joined, and is fully supportive of, the MOU as the right mechanism to ban conversion therapy, a ban which has been our consistent policy. We are not looking to create an alternative MOU […] I have raised this with UKCP and asked them to refrain from sending out these statements”

3: UKCP say that they didn’t have time to consider the potential fallout. We respect that the open letter went up the same day as the announcement. However, what this tells us is that the board just did not consider this, in advance of releasing such a huge statement. They also say in the same meeting that they DID consider that it might be seen as transphobic, but that none of them (it seems) considered the impact that might have. One cannot have it both ways.

“We didn’t have time to address the potential fallout before the petition came against us. So we have been and we are always against conversion therapy and the petition was based on incorrect information”

“To be totally transparent we considered that the withdrawal taken out of context could be experienced as transphobic and homophobic, but what we didn’t consider was the potential impact.” “We believe that as the existing board that we have the skills, the vision and the ethical sensitivity to take the forward and deliver on the charity’s strategic aims”

“We did discuss it with colleagues. We did discuss with some of the colleges, although we acknowledged we didn’t discuss with all of them”

4: From the MoU2: “conversion therapy’ is an umbrella term for a therapeutic approach, or any model or individual viewpoint that demonstrates an assumption that any sexual orientation or gender identity is inherently preferable to any other, and which attempts to bring about a change of sexual orientation or gender identity, or seeks to suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity on that basis.” and “signatory organisations agree that the practice of conversion therapy, whether in relation to sexual orientation or gender identity, is unethical and potentially harmful.”

UKCP state concerns about children and not knowing that children were covered under ‘people’. What exactly *are* children, to UKCP, if not people? Jen Ayling stated:  “you know, a child’s need is very different to an adult’s needs and I think that’s where there’s the need for additional guidance.” The MoU does not give guidance on HOW to work with people exploring their gender. It simply allows room for children to fully explore their identities from within a framework that believes “that neither sexual orientation nor gender identity in themselves are indicators of a mental disorder” (MoU2)

From the UKCP meeting: “Now we did an attempt to engage in dialogue but came to the point when faced with a significant increase in our insurance premium”

They suggest that “over the last few weeks we have endeavoured as a board to transparently communicate the reasoning and risk assessment process which underpinned our decision”, yet they have changed their story to being about insurance and explicitly state they couldn’t state this originally. What has legally changed that they now can?

5: From the meeting: “Any clinical guidance will be backed by robust research evidence. We’re supportive of the Cass review and it will form part of our ongoing considerations when creating new regulation and clinical guidance”. Cass has been discredited in many areas and by many voices since its publication. See Transactual the OSF Preprint paper, and Dr Ruth Pearce’s ongoing updates for just three of them.

They also state “You see what we urgently need to do is create new regulatory guidance for conversion practices that has good governance, transparency, consultation, the voice of psychotherapy and most importantly the voices of the LGBTQIA+ community”.

UKCP would not answer a question as to whether they were prepared to start any new version of an MoU from the point of view that a trans identity was as valid as a cisgender identity. They did talk about “healthy exploratory therapy”. Florence Ashley has a very useful paper on why ‘exploratory therapy’ within a framework that doesn’t accept trans (whether in adults or children) as a valid identity is conversion therapy. UKCP declined to answer to this question as well.

6: From the meeting: “The upheaval and cost implications to the charity of appointing an entirely new board would essentially make the organization non-functioning in terms of major future developments for a significant period of time. Conference planning, strategic development work and many of the other projects we’ve successfully launched would have to be put on ice.”

However they go on to list all the things they have achieved as a new board. Which seems to directly contradict their claims of destabilisation.

“There’s a lot done but not all of it will be directly visible to you. So we started to work preparing the relationship with colleges, which was a factor within the EGM core. We are managing legal claims. We relocated the offices.  17th June, I think was the D date. And estimated to save 150 K annually. We’re improving office performance. We’re guiding the NHS pathways, talking therapies pilots. We’ve reinstated the annual conference. We reinstated the ethics committee. And as many of you again will be aware, we’ve consulted on and a developing the new 3 year strategy. And I just want to say a little bit about that is that the three-year strategy and we’ve run 3 4 seminars on that already through 4 webinars on that already. And put up various polls just to gain attraction and interest. The Strategy Working Group is comprised of 2 chairs at the colleges and one vice chair of the colleges working with the board nominated board of trustees.”

UKCP is presenting a bundle of contradictions and obfuscations to its members. There is no real clarity and in removing themselves from the MoU they place their members in a very difficult position.

Response and corrections to The Telegraph

We are aware of an article by Henry Bodkin for The Telegraph that has made several unfounded claims about Therapists Against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia (TACTT). The article focuses on the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP)’s public withdrawal from the Memorandum of Understanding opposing Conversion Therapy (MOU2), citing concerns about the inclusion of children in that document.

The article features comments from the Chairman of UKCP, representatives of the Cass Review Committee, and the British Psychoanalytic Council. A variety of accusations were levelled at TACTT in the article and, in a failure of the most basic journalistic ethics set out in the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice, the article does not accurately convey the facts of the situation and misrepresents both TACTT and members of UKCP who have sought a ballot for possible removal of the Board of Trustees. 

TACTT can confirm that no approaches have been made publicly or via direct message for us to comment on the piece or its accusations, even though we are easy for journalists to reach through email and social media and Mr Bodkin cited our website in the article. 

There are three patently false claims in the article that defame members of TACTT who have taken a stand on UKCP’s withdrawal from MOU2, and one further factual inaccuracy. All of these inaccuracies are liable to mislead the public: 

1. TACTT is trying to undertake a coup against the UKCP Board of Trustees
2. Members of TACCT are ‘bullying’ members of the UKCP Board of Trustees
3. TACTT is ‘[turning] a blind eye to the safety of children
4. UKCP is a “regulator of child psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling”

We will address each of these points in turn. 

1. The calls for a vote of no confidence in UKCP’s Board of Trustees come from within the UKCP’s own membership. Signatories to the motion included members of TACTT and UKCP members who have no association with us. The motion was submitted in line with the regulation established in article 17.1 of UKCP’s own Articles of Association. 

The numbers of UKCP members who signed the motion exceeded the minimum required two percent of the number of members as of the first day of the month of the receipt of the first petition, as set out in the Articles of Association. Signatories believed that UKCP Trustees did not follow their own by the UKCP board when they made this decision to withdraw from the MOU2 without consultation with the membership or Articles-mandated Member’s Forum which “should be consulted on the future direction and strategy of the Charity and advise and collaborate with the Board of Trustees.” It is this failure in process that led to this call for a vote of no confidence. 

The motion will put the continuation or removal of the Board of Trustees to a democratic vote of the entire membership within 120 days of the motion, as set out in the Articles of Association. This is far from the definition of a coup. If the membership expresses through a free vote that it agrees with the organisation’s withdrawal from MOU2 and is satisfied with the conduct of the Board of Trustees on this matter, no individual or group of members will be in a position to take over the Board of Trustees nor does TACTT believe this would be in the best interest of members or psychotherapy clients of any age.

The Board of Trustees is accountable to its membership. The Articles of Association have been adhered to and members are entitled to exercise their democratic right to vote on the continuation or removal of the Board of Trustees. 

The characterisation of TACTT as making a power grab is disingenuous. TACTT would have been able to correct these inaccuracies had we been approached, but no attempts have been made to contact us for comment. 

2. It is false and misleading to characterise the membership of UKCP who have requested the removal election as “bullying” the Chair of the Board of Trustees or any other members of the Board. It is particularly misleading to say that TACTT as a collective is doing so. The Articles exist to ensure the proper running of the UKCP for the benefit of its membership and the psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling clients with whom its membership works. Being held accountable through a democratic election is not bullying.

3. It is false and defamatory to characterise either TACTT as a group or members of UKCP who have signed the removal election motion as having disregard for the wellbeing and safeguarding of transgender children and young people. While we were not able to comment on The Telegraph’s article, we would like to thank Dr Moon for their comments included in the article. We concur that all therapeutic models are exploratory and this can only be ethically achieved in situations where gender or sexuality enter the therapeutic work by viewing no gender or sexuality as inherently better or preferable. This holds true for people of all ages seeking psychotherapy or psychotherapeutic counselling. Any other approach is conversion therapy.  

The comments from the Cass Review committee representative also imply that any membership organisation or regulatory body remaining signatories of the MOU2 are “[lowering] the bar on standards of clinical practice and safeguarding for… children and young people.” In the Cass Review’s own FAQs, they state that “no LGBTQ+ group should be subjected to conversion therapy,” and the MOU2 and TACTT are in agreement on this point. It is the guiding idea behind both the memorandum and our group. However by standing by that idea, we and the MOU2 signatories are painted as placing children and young people at risk.

Within the article, the Cass Review itself is presented as a “report on the dangers of gender ideology”, rather than the systematic review of trans healthcare provision by NHS England for children and adolescents. This is false and misleading. The article also misquotes and misrepresents the recommendation from the review that enhanced follow-on support for those aged 17-25 from GIDS, suggesting that people under 25 have been “rushed into changing gender”.

4. The story as presented in the article had a further inaccuracy and raised additional concerns amongst TACTT members. The UKCP chair presents the organisation as a “regulator of child psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling.” The representative of the Cass Review committee similarly implies that the UKCP is a “regulator.” 

The UKCP is a membership organisation, not a regulatory body. It is factually incorrect to state that UKCP is a regulator, as membership organisations and regulatory bodies are very different things. A regulatory body mandates registration. Counsellors and Psychotherapists in the UK can voluntarily join a number of organisations, but it is not a requirement to be a member of any, nor specifically the UKCP. 

While TACTT members have our concerns about the Cass Review recommendations, and are working on a full response having given an interim response on our blog, we find the way the report is being used, misused, and weaponised in media conversations deeply worrying. This is especially evident when erroneous claims that misrepresent the UKCP members within and outside of the TACTT members who are making use of their democratic ability within their voluntary membership bodies to work how they see ethically fit when the Board of Trustees has not adhered to its own standards of behaviour.

Our petition for removal by election to UKCP

As many followers know, we have recently been described as bullying for asking that processes be invoked around voting for removal by election of the trustees of UKCP.

Our response to the newspaper article will follow later today but for completeness’ sake, here is the official letter to UKCP, sent on 11 April:

Dear UKCP Company Secretary, and who else this may concern,

I am writing to formally deliver a petition on behalf of alarmed UKCP members regarding UKCP’s board’s latest decision to withdraw as a signatory of the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK v2 (MoU) and its membership of the Coalition Against Conversion Therapy. 

The petition lays out the reasons for our petition and calls for a vote of no confidence in the UKCP board, and for a removal election to be held for the current Trustees. Please find the link to the petition here: Petition

As per UKCP’s Articles of Association, Article 17, the petition has so far garnered the signatures of the required threshold of 2% of your membership as of the 10th April 2024 (9072) (this is not considering students, trainees and retired members). Please find attached the list of the signatures extracted from the letter for your reference. The letter has also garnered the additional support of more than 1000 of concerned professionals in the sector.

As per your Articles of Association, we are expecting a removal election to be held within 120 days of receipt of this petition, with members receiving at least 30 days of notice of it happening. 

Please kindly confirm reception of this petition and provide confirmation of the timeline by which we should get a response.

As a trainee UKCP member, I am personally delivering this petition as one of the many trainees and students who are refused a voice in UKCP elections, as a symbolic show that we do have a voice.

Sincerely,

Our interim response to the Cass report

Friday 12th April 2024

Media statement: 


TACTT is deeply concerned by the final report of the Cass Review, whose core underlying premise is effectively an eliminationist agenda, dressed up in the language of ‘reasonableness’. 

We do not accept the manner in which the report’s findings were reached, nor the contention that such findings were reached in good faith. We are appalled by reports that the Cass Review is already being used to justify restrictions to access to private care for under-18s and could potentially restrict access to care for under-25s.  

The UK is now considered a hostile country for trans people, especially trans children (Horton, 2024). We fear that this situation will worsen in the aftermath of this review. 

TACTT acknowledges that a review of service provision was needed in the light of distressingly long NHS waiting times. Such delays were named as a matter of concern in the prevention of future deaths report issued by the coroner presiding over the December 2023 inquest into the tragic death of Alice Litman.

Pending our forthcoming detailed response, we urge fellow clinicians to be cognisant of the fact that uncritically following the review’s recommendations/findings could invoke a risk of harm. 

We reiterate our commitment to a basic accepting and open-minded attitude, and our respect for principles of self-determination and autonomy, as fundamental elements of psychotherapeutic support. 

In the interim:

• We note that the Cass report claims to consider wider context, yet excludes mention of recent increases in abusive hate speech, discrimination and violence and sustained legislative, political and media campaigns that threaten the human rights of trans people (as recently noted by a UN Special Rapporteur). Moreover, the final report did not present findings on any potential barriers to accessing care for multiply marginalised young people, who experience racism, classism and other forms of discrimination. 

• We express our profound concern at review findings/recommendations that are at variance with current international guidelines. 

• We note that despite the report’s claims that a wide range of perspectives including those with lived experience were heard, anti-trans voices and opinions were centred throughout the report whilst often being presented (from the inception of the project) as ‘impartial’.

• We echo expressions of concern from expert individuals and organisations regarding methodological flaws of the report. We note that evidence supporting an anti-trans position was consistently held to a lower burden of proof or research standard than other material. We note that the Cass Review dismissed numerous research studies whose results strengthened the evidence base to support medical treatment for gender incongruence. 

• We reject the report’s hunt for ‘causes’ that paves the way for fundamentally pathologising approaches that treat trans people – young and old – as a problem. 

We express our support to impacted young people and their families for whom this week has been profoundly traumatic.

We urge clinicians to treat the Cass findings with extreme caution and not to assume that they represent best practice or that they have been arrived at after a full and impartial review of clinical data. 

Further information: 

email therapistsagainsttransphobia@gmail.com

TACTT

Who we are

Therapists Against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia (TACTT) is a  grassroots collective of therapists, counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and other therapeutic practitioners, incuding trainees in these fields, who oppose conversion therapy and transphobia in the therapy profession.We do not have a formal structure, which allows for individuals within the group to take action. We are UK-based but our members are based all over the world, each doing their bit to take action.