Sonia Appleby vs Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
Safeguarding concerns at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS)
Sonia Appleby was the named Safeguarding Lead for Children at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She bought a claim to the Employment Tribunal for detriments she suffered due to her whistleblowing in respect of the Trust’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). Sonia had held her role at the Trust since 2004 and was still employed by the Trust at the time of the tribunal which spanned 8 days in Summer 2021.
Sonia made disclosures about safeguarding concerns at GIDS after staff had approached her with concerns such as the rising number of children being referred to the service and that some patients were accessing puberty blocking drugs outside the service via a private GP, Dr Helen Webberley. After ‘blowing the whistle’ in this manner, Sonia alleged that she suffered detriments including that there was an ‘unwritten but mandated directive from the Tavistock management that safeguarding concerns should not be brought to my attention’ and that ‘clinicians were discouraged from reporting safeguarding concerns to me.’
Read more about the case on Sonia’s crowd funding page: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/gids-concerns/ and also an archived earlier version of the page. Crowd funder archive link
Sonia prevailed in her claim against the Trust and was awarded damages. The judgment by Employment Judge Sarah Goodman can be read here.
The tribunal was live tweeted by Hannah Barnes, a BBC journalist who has since written a book about GIDS: Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children.
Hannah’s tweet threads from the tribunal are linked below. This was not covered by the members of Tribunal Tweets.
Live tweet threads
Press coverage
This post includes links to a selection of relevant press coverage. These links are included without comment and are not endorsed by Tribunal Tweets. This is a sample of coverage only - it is not comprehensive. Please DM our main Twitter account to submit coverage from an established news outlet. Any paywalled article must be archived.
BBC: NHS child gender identity clinic whistleblower wins tribunal https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58453250
Guardian: NHS gender identity clinic whistleblower wins damages
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/04/gender-identity-clinic-whistleblower-wins-damages
The Times: Gender identity clinic whistleblower wins damages for ‘vilification’