Last week the BBC announced that the 2024 Children in Need appeal had raised more than £39 million for charity. With such large sums of money, comes great responsibility – which charities are worthy of funding, and which ones should be kept at the end of the proverbial bargepole?
This week, Rosie Millard has resigned as chair of Children in Need, she says, because of an ‘institutional failure’ that led to almost £500,000 being paid out to LGBT Youth Scotland (LGBTYS). Payments only stopped, Millard says, when she alerted Children in Need of the history of the charity it was funding. In 2009, James Rennie – chief executive of LGBTYS from 2003 to 2008 – was jailed for life after being revealed as part of one of Britain’s worst paedophile rings. LGBTYS received its first grant from Children in Need seven months after Rennie was convicted.
It is not as if LGBTYS has become a force for good in the lives of young people since. It has relentlessly promoted the idea that everyone has a gender identity, and to this day its website churns out the sort of advice that children do not need to hear.
Its ‘Trans and Non-Binary Coming Out Guide’ reads more like propaganda. After dismissing the idea that there are only two ‘genders’, readers are advised to experiment with different names and pronouns before ‘finding the ones that feel right’.
To children who are finding life tough, LGBTYS suggests some ‘coping strategies’. Top of the list is ‘Spending time with people who care about and accept you’, including ‘supportive family members, an LGBTI youth group, or your friends and chosen family’. LGBTYS, of course, runs youth groups around Scotland for those aged 13 to 25.
It’s not just Children in Need of course who have doled out cash to LGBTYS. The Scottish taxpayer has been a major funder. In the year ended 31 March 2024, LGBTYS received £484,000 in grants from the Scottish government, and another £370,000 from Scottish local authorities. On top of that, NHS organisations chipped in £330,000.
This is an organisation that has wormed its way to the centre of policy making in Scotland. The Scottish Government’s own transgender guidance for Scottish schools – promoted by the SNP Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills no less – was developed from an earlier LGBTYS publication, and links to LGBTYS services
The problem, it seems, is that different standards have been applied to an organisation that purports to support ‘LBGT’ Youth. Other organisations would have had to do a lot more to prove their worthiness, especially after such as scandal. But like the Scottish government, Children in Need seemed to cast aside judgement and discernment when it came to LGBTYS.
Rosie Millard was right to raise concerns, and she was right to resign. Her letter – which has been seen by the Times – criticises Children in Need’s CEO Simon Antrobus for failing to respond with what she felt was the ‘necessary level of seriousness’.
All organisations need to be careful about the safeguarding of children and respond to serious allegations promptly. Rennie was by far from the only concern in LGBTYS’s past. Millard alleged Children in Need hesitated for months about grants to the charity. That’s a poor look an organisation linked to the BBC.
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