Families shocked to find biological males were allowed to provide intimate care for vulnerable women due to a subtle change in the rules
- Care company provided mother of Amanda Watkins with at-home assistance
- The firm had listed protected characteristics specified in the Equality Act 2010
- But care firm had deleted the word ‘sex’ and replaced it with ‘gender’ instead
- It meant potentially anyone who identified as a woman could care for her mother
Amanda Watkins was fast asleep in the spare room of her elderly mother’s house when she was awoken by the sound of a man’s voice.
Shaken, she jumped out of bed and rushed to 81-year-old Joyce’s room. There, she found her mum lying half-naked, at the end of her bed, with a man in a Covid face mask standing over her.
Her heart pounding, she quickly realised the stranger was actually from the care company who provided her frail, dementia-suffering mother with at-home assistance.
‘Mum had pressed the alarm around her neck to alert the firm that she’d fallen,’ says Amanda, a 50-year-old special needs teacher.
‘They have a key, so he’d let himself in, found her and was just about to move her into a sitting position. Unfortunately Mum, who is doubly incontinent, had badly soiled herself and he was simply standing there, looking a bit helpless.
It seemed that — these incidents aside — Amanda’s monitoring of the sex of her mother’s carers had done the trick. Imagine then how Amanda felt six months ago when a friend who uses the same care company told her of a possible new recruit to the care team [File photo]
‘It wasn’t his fault, but I felt dreadful for Mum, lying there with no pyjama bottoms on, so I asked him to leave while I cleaned her and put her to bed.’
While this carer thankfully behaved with complete propriety when the incident occurred late last year, Amanda, who was staying with her mother at the time in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, was still deeply displeased.
For after a past worrying incident, she has requested that her mum — who was diagnosed with dementia three years ago — receives care from women only to preserve her privacy.
‘Clearly, this night-time incident had been an emergency. But I’d had some issues previously with a male carer who would turn up and make comments about touching Mum ‘being the highlight of his day’.
It felt inappropriate, so I’d complained and asked them to send only women from then on,’ says Amanda.
‘Despite having dementia, Mum still understands things and is humiliated to need care at all. Thanks to her incontinence, either myself or her carers have to wash and change her pads at least four times a day. If you’re a woman — and especially one as vulnerable as Mum — that’s not something you want any man to be doing for you.’
It seemed that — these incidents aside — Amanda’s monitoring of the sex of her mother’s carers had done the trick. Imagine then how Amanda felt six months ago when a friend who uses the same care company told her of a possible new recruit to the care team.
‘She told me a trans woman was being interviewed and I asked whether that meant a biological male,’ she says.
‘She said yes and I made a mental note to check with the manager that this person would not be providing intimate care for Mum.
‘A fortnight later, the manager came over to review Mum’s care and I raised it. She confirmed a trans woman was being interviewed for a job and that they were a ‘trans-friendly, inclusive company’.
I said that was fine, but I would still like same-sex care for Mum. She seemed surprised I’d bring it up, equating it to me not wanting a black person or a lesbian caring for Mum.
‘I was horrified and said it wasn’t the same thing at all. I simply don’t want a biological male — however they might identify — giving washes and changing pads for Mum.’
But Amanda’s concern deepened still further when she made a recent discovery every person with a vulnerable relative — be they elderly or disabled — should be aware of.
Buried in the standard renewal contract for her mother’s care was a small but hugely significant change. Whereas previously the care firm had listed the protected characteristics — including race, religion and sex — of both clients and staff as specified in the Equality Act 2010, they had now deleted ‘sex’ and replaced it with ‘gender’.
It meant that potentially anyone who said they identified as a woman could care for Amanda’s mother.
‘I couldn’t believe that they had missed out ‘sex’ — the very thing that protects my mum from having a man care for her,’ Amanda says.
‘So I rang them to tell them of their mistake and they were like: ‘Oh yeah, we must have forgotten…’ and put ‘sex’ back in.
‘Intimate care takes place in my mum’s home. Unless you give permission, it should always be done by a member of the same sex.’
One can only be thankful that Amanda was so meticulous. But others, too, have found their right to female-only care has been quietly erased by authorities keen to ‘celebrate diversity’.
Just this month, JK Rowling highlighted this issue of single-sex intimate care — meaning when someone is bathed, washed or dressed by a person of the same sex — by drawing attention to the case of Helen, a severely learning-disabled 16-year-old girl.
Helen’s right to same-sex care at her special school in the South-East had suddenly been replaced with ‘cross-gender’ care. It meant biologically male members of staff, however they identified, would be able to help Helen with using the toilet and managing menstruation, a truly grim thought for any parent or carer of a vulnerable relative.
It seems there are no bounds for the spread of this gender ideology, where biological sex counts for nothing, where long-held protections and safeguarding are brushed over, no matter the real risk inherent in such actions.
One can only be thankful that Amanda was so meticulous. But others, too, have found their right to female-only care has been quietly erased by authorities keen to ‘celebrate diversity’
Indeed, just last week, the Mail anatomised in worrying detail how previously hallowed female spaces, such as High Street shop changing rooms, female gym areas and women’s refuges, were being opened to anyone who identified as a woman.
Now, we can reveal something even more concerning: that worried families believe the campaign for trans rights is putting those least able to defend themselves — frail elderly women and vulnerable disabled females — in potentially terrible danger.
As JK Rowling, whose own mother had needed such care, put it herself: ‘This is a travesty. Have we learned nothing from successive abuse scandals?’
Her words and the case of Helen prompted a debate in the House of Lords last week in which Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne said: ‘My concern is that on welfare and safety we have gone backwards for the most vulnerable of people.’
She added: ‘It is scandalous that the school . . . has removed cross-gender consent from personal and intimate care policy . . . 50 per cent of local authorities, I understand, have adopted that position.
‘This means that behind the closed door of a lavatory, male members of staff, without any necessary qualification at all, and with no consent from the parents of the patients, and with the patient unable to agree, can dress, undress, use tampons . . . and can, in other words, indulge themselves, if they so wish, with female genitalia.
‘These are girls and women who cannot object, who cannot consent . . . sexual assaults are happening.’
This week, the Mail spoke to Helen’s parents Sarah and Charles, who say they were ‘horrified’ their daughter’s school had taken away her rights to have female-only carers for her most intimate care without any warning.
‘When I first saw the email, it was one of those things that felt so dramatic, I thought I’d got it wrong,’ says Sarah. ‘I immediately emailed back because my gut instinct was that this wasn’t lawful.
‘What really devastated us was that this had happened in a special school to pupils who have no mental capacity and will never have mental capacity.
‘My fear was that if this could happen in a special school, it could happen anywhere, to anyone, and could happen to us again.’
Sarah and Charles challenged the school’s decision, arguing the policy revision was likely to be unlawful as it failed to comply with the Equality Act 2010’s same-sex exemptions for the provision of single-sex services.
‘The school confirmed it had decided to amend the guidelines after questions were raised by the governors about what would happen in the case of intimate care being provided by staff who identified as transgender or non-binary,’ says Charles.
‘The school then went on to take advice from its local authority and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) [the professional body for human resources] before rewriting the policy.
‘But after seeking expert legal advice following our complaint, the school was told that under the Equality Act, providing same-sex care does not constitute unlawful discrimination.
‘That’s when they backtracked and reissued a policy which once again included a commitment that pupils will [only] be cared for by staff members of the same sex — but only if this is the wish of the student, their parents or carers.
‘The school commented that the guidelines now ‘seem quite dated and . . . the law has not kept pace with the mainstream opinion about the treatment of people whose gender identity is different from their [biological] sex’.’
Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of campaign group Transgender Trend, which has campaigned against the impact of gender ideology on young people, says: ‘Organisations think that they have to prioritise diversity, equality and inclusion above everything else. It’s become like the holy grail representing the greatest moral good.
‘But those same organisations are forgetting that they have an obligation to consider all protected characteristics (this includes the sex of a person) and make sure they are serving the needs and the rights of all groups.
‘And in cases such as the provision of intimate care, exclusion is absolutely necessary for the safeguarding and protection of vulnerable groups.’
Yet when asked by the Mail if it was possible for people to insist on care by someone of the same biological sex, a spokesman for the Care Quality Commission (CQC) says: ‘We follow the current law and policy set by the relevant bodies and courts in this area.
‘However as we are not the regulator of the Equality Act 2010, it is not our role to set policy on this subject. We advise providers to follow national guidelines and, if necessary, assure themselves of their legal position through seeking their own legal advice.’
Scant comfort, you might think then, for those with vulnerable relatives, like Amanda, and Charles and Sarah.
While they have won their current battle, Charles and Sarah say the emotional toll has been heavy. They have been left fearful that the same situation could be playing out in other special needs schools — particularly for children who don’t have parents or family to insist on those rights to same-sex care.
‘This is not a trans rights issue to me, it’s a sex-based rights issue,’ says Charles. ‘It doesn’t matter to me whether a biologically male member of staff does or doesn’t identify as a woman.
‘The bigger issue about the rights to women’s services and women’s spaces isn’t because I think trans people are more likely to be predators. It’s that, if we don’t have those barriers, we have a route for predators.’
Statistics seem to back up their fears.
A report by the CQC in 2020 found women receiving care — that’s elderly and disabled females — were three times more likely to be victims of assault than men, and that men were nearly four times more likely to be the perpetrator.
In total, nearly 1,000 allegations of sexual assault or incidents were reported to the health watchdog in just three months in 2018, including 47 rapes. The CQC says the impact on vulnerable people and their families of such attacks is ‘utterly devastating’.
Indeed, Charles and Sarah describe just such a case, that of Cassie, a severely learning-disabled woman in her 50s who had contracted HIV while living in care.
It was determined that the HIV had been sexually transmitted.
As Cassie did not have the capacity to consent, it was concluded that she had been raped by one or more of her male care staff.
The perpetrators have not been identified and may still be working in care.
Heather Binning, founder of the Women’s Rights Network, says women and girls in particular need the reassurance of knowing another woman will be attending to them when it comes to intimate care.
‘Any one of us could find ourselves needing intimate care at any time, so we should be as comfortable as possible with who is providing it,’ she says.
‘Our bodies are the ultimate boundaries. We know that 98 per cent of recorded sexual offences are committed by males, however they identify. So if we can’t refuse a man touching our body, what can we refuse?’
Henrietta Freeman, 29, from Buckinghamshire, also has concerns about care provider policies insisting on ‘same-gender’ rather than ‘same-sex’ care.
Henrietta developed an undiagnosed neurological condition at 18 months old and has limited arm function, weakened chest muscles and uses a powered wheelchair because she is unable to walk.
While her sister and mother currently help provide her care, and occasionally an external carer, she still worries.
‘I try to be as independent as possible and have good days and bad,’ she says. ‘But I do need help with various tasks and intimate care including dressing, washing, emptying my catheter, getting on and off the toilet and changing any dressings, so I always insist on same-sex care. It’s about privacy and dignity.
‘I urge anyone able-bodied to imagine you were reliant on someone for intimate care and couldn’t move to defend yourself.
‘It’s only recently that I’ve realised the trans issue will start to clash with same-sex rights of disabled people.
‘Self-ID [in which a biological male can simply say they are a woman] puts vulnerable people in undignified and potentially dangerous situations.
‘I want to speak out because if I don’t, who else will? I would never want a biological male — however they identify — to administer my care.
‘I don’t like to think of myself as vulnerable but I would not be able to defend myself if something did happen, and when I’m on my ventilator, I wouldn’t even be able to shout for help.
‘I have been called transphobic, homophobic and a bigot for my views. But if I am called that simply for wanting my wishes to be upheld and more so to protect disabled people who are not able to speak out, then so be it.
‘It’s not transphobic to know who your carer is.’
*Some names have been changed.
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