The NHS has a problem with whistle blowers: how it treats them and how it deals with their concerns. This is evidenced by the number of reports, scandals and cases brought by people who just know something is rotten at the core of the various NHS Trusts up and down the country. Whether it be the Darlington nurses who recently won a hard-fought victory against their trust after it refused to stop a man changing in front of them, Peggie Upton who was harassed by NHS Fife, ‘LS’ who won her discrimination claims against NHS England at trial, Sonia Appleby, the successful whistleblower against the Gender Identity Disorder Service (GIDS), or those who raised the alarm about Nottingham University Hospitals’ maternity scandal. The list goes on and on and on.
I qualified as a Child Psychotherapist in 1999 and have spent the past 26 years working with abused and neglected children trying to ensure they are given the best care, protection and safeguarding whilst under the auspices of the state system. From 2001, I have been a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and team manager working for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust (recently rebranded as ‘North London NHS Foundation Trust’ since its acquisition in April 2026) in its Complex Assessment Team (CAT).
In the course of my duties in 2021 and 2022, working in the CAT team doing family assessments for court with my psychiatrist colleague Dr McQueen, we raised child protection concerns because we thought that was the right thing to do. Taking my case to the Employment Tribunal, I raised 16 individual child protection concerns. To give you a flavour of them, they included (i) threats of retaliation (towards my team) by social workers, (ii) poor professional conduct of social workers and (iii) ongoing and historic child protection concerns. I believe in response to these concerns, the trust shut down CAT and restarted a previously closed investigation into me. I brought whistleblowing and discrimination claims in the employment tribunal, hoping the justice system would come to my aid.
I issued the case in January 2023, and spent thousands of pounds of my own money and then had to rely on the kindness of strangers with crowd funding to get it to trial. During trial, the tribunal thought it perfectly fine to allow a key witness to rewrite his witness statement whilst he was cross examined, because “he had not seen the claim form” when he wrote his first one. The tribunal did find that I had experienced a “detriment” (something I need to win), but because the detriment was “fleeting” it didn’t matter. In another incomprehensible decision, the tribunal found that the trust telling me to take my whistleblowing concerns elsewhere had nothing to do with my previous whistle blowing. All of my claims were rejected by the tribunal and the trust continues to deny these claims.
My appeal will be heard on August 6th and 7th in the Employment Appeal Tribunal in the Rolls Building, London. I just hope that finally an appeal level judge will realise that my whistleblowing was legitimate and that the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust retaliated against me simply because I wanted to raise concerns about children being harmed.
I was made redundant after the CAT was shut down. I’m still struggling and, even if successful, the most likely outcome is a re-trial (hopefully in front of a different tribunal). Even if I’m successful at the retrial, that won’t force the trust to take my child safeguarding concerns seriously. There is nothing in the employment laws that give litigants and judges the power to do this. So what is it for?
After going through the system, I’m left with the belief that the whistleblowing system is not fit for purpose. I don’t want to win my case for money; I want to win my case to ensure that children are not harmed. That was the purpose of my employment over 26 years and I feel it wrong that the purpose of my whistleblowing claim cannot be child safety. I believe we are failing children, patients and families and all those who have suffered because safety concerns were not listened to.
Who is willing to make the change?
Support Lynne’s appeal by contributing to her crowd funder here.
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The Tavistock Clinic was clearly up to its ears in very bad things, every time they get slapped down they refuse to accept wrongdoing and simply carry on.
It’s not fixable, the only solution is disbandment and for the offending clinical staff to be struck off. I bet even that wouldn’t stop them, because of mental illness effectively.
Peggie Upton? Shurely shome mishtake.
Sandy Peggie vs that bloke Upton innit?
A valiant effort.
Who is willing to make the change? Evidently no one.
You’d think that there’s already enough evidence for pretty much all his evil wrongdoing over the years. But the Biden pardon pretty much shuts it all down.
Trouble is, if they do decide to take him down, say on a contempt charge, there’s too many people shitting themselves that he’ll blab. The tentacles of the Covid scam go far and wide.
He’ll not be saying a word before he sinks into his stinking grave.
I wonder how often other readers have to login each day.
I must say I don’t have too many problems in that respect, recently, I find it goes in phases.
That does seem to be the modus operandi of the British state at all levels.
It has become a rotten corrupt expensive leviathan.
Yep. Dedicated to only one thing: its continued survival. Hence the treatment of whistleblowers and other “troublemakers”.