RELENTLESS in 2025: Gender, Sexuality, Body Affirmation Plans and indoctrination: DECYP and 'Working it Out' trains staff to contend with backlash

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“Create an affirmation plan for a body”.  - Working it Out (WIO)- DECYP workshop for training Tasmanian teachers to 'affirm a student's body'- 2025 

Pink Floyd VIDEO - "ALL IN ALL YOUR JUST A - NOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL"

The Tasmanian Education Department (DECYP) makes policy in conflict with its own Tasmanian Education Act as well as the Tasmanian Child Welfare Act, harming kids and families along the way. 

‘Supporting Sexuality, Sex and Gender Diversity Policy’ -  Read policy here and read procedure here.

Both Acts centre the child's parents as first and foremost the people primarily responsible for their child's education and welfare, who must be included and respected in all decision making - not as optional extras after schools and WIO have educated students in non-evidenced based theories about identity, turning children against their families, deeming them ‘unsafe’. 

Over decades teachers have been schooled in Family Partnership Unconditional Positive Regard practices, to walk alongside students and their families because of past institutional harms. Instead, DECYP forgets history and undermines its own government’s Acts and makes the State a paternalistic intruder, with its euphemistically titled 'affirmation plans' interfering in the privacy and dignity of families, just like the State did with the stolen generation and in the forced adoption era.

The Tasmanian Education Act and the Tasmanian Welfare Act state clearly where families stand:


The Core of the Education Act Gutted 

By encouraging teachers and schools to write ‘affirmation plans’, which sets students on a path to medicalisation and to being life-long medical patients, this thereby undermines the very key objective of the Education Act, which is to give each child  a fulfilling life, achieving their potential. How will this be possible when DECYP is putting students on a path to maiming their bodies and harming their minds? The Education Act has at its core to provide "every child with a high quality education that -
(i) helps maximise the child's educational potential; and
(ii) provides the foundation to enable the child, throughout childhood and as an adult, to lead a fulfilling life and to contribute to the Tasmanian community” 

Acting with No Authority   

The lobby group Working it Out Inc. (WIO) - which is not a 'prescribed authority’ under the Education Act- fraudulently and misleadingly present the affirmation of a child's ‘gender identity' (which is in fact a quasi-religious belief with no scientific evidence) as necessary, and mandatory, even when a family disagree with such plans, and see it quite rightfully, as harmful to their child,  which  current medical evidence also sees as harmful.
ARTICLES:  Australian Doctors rethink Gender Affirming Care .

 DECYP unethically ignores this evidence and calls parents ‘unsafe’ if they object to an ‘affirmation plan’.


The Tasmanian Education Act and Child Welfare Act see the family and guardians as having the primary role in the welfare and education of their child, but this Sexuality and Gender policy and procedure disrespects this and a family's values, culture, religious beliefs- even though these aspects are articulated as pillars of the International Human Rights of the Child. 

All medical evidence around the world now points to the fact that 'affirming a child's gender identity' is unsafe and unethical.
Regardless of this, like a school bully, Working it Out supports a child of any age who self declares a new gender identity, to change their names and pronouns, and alter their bodies using Working it Out’s own   ‘Affirmation Fund’

This may disregard the values and heritage of a family which for instance have named their child after a significant family member or in relation to their country of origin. This is a flagrant contravening of the human rights of the child.

Hoodwinking Parents 

DECYP's policy fails to acknowledge that medical knowledge about their child must be requested in writing to the child's parents, and agreed upon by both parents, yet DECYP act as if it is WIO and DECYP's right to take over psychological, and medical welfare of their child.


The Tasmanian Education Act states - 

63.   Requesting medical information

(1)  In this section –
prescribed authority has the same meaning as in  section 61 .
(2)  A prescribed authority may request the parent of a child to provide medical information about the child, or a consent or authority authorising the prescribed authority to have access to that information, for the following purposes:
(a) to assess whether the enrolment or continued enrolment of the child in a school is likely to constitute a risk, because of the behaviour of the child, to the health and safety of the child or any student, teacher or other person at the school;
(b) to develop and maintain strategies to support the child's access to education and eliminate or ameliorate any risk of the kind specified in  paragraph (a) .
(3)  A request under  subsection (2)  –
(a) is to be in writing; and
(b) may request that the information specified in the request, or the consent or authority, be provided within the reasonable period specified in the request.
(4)  A prescribed authority must not use or disclose any medical information obtained from a child's parent, or by the use of the consent or authority provided by the child's parent, for any purposes other than the purposes for which it was obtained.
Penalty:  Fine not exceeding 50 penalty units.

'Policy and Procedure Manuals'

Though the Tasmanian anti-discrimination Act does not compel language and centres families in decision making, the Tasmanian Education Department's ‘Supporting Sexuality, Sex and Gender Diversity Policy' and 'Procedure Manual’ overrides this, defining what is offensive language or as they deem ‘discriminatory', compelling a teacher's speech to affirm identities and participate in psychosocial interventions, as the 'child leads' which is not evidence based but counter to the child's well being and leaves parents as outsiders- 
Australian Doctors rethink Gender Affirming Care

DECYP - according to the procedure manual
"3.5 Teachers must:

understand the requirements of the Procedure and their obligations

respond to homophobic, transphobic or intersexism bullying and incidents of harassment and discrimination against LGBTIQA+ students in line with the Student Behaviour Management Policy and legislation

seek support from school leadership or professional support staff, as required, to comply with their obligations under the Procedure

use a student’s preferred name and pronouns."

Worse still, the procedure manual advocates for the eradication of binary language in favour of Working it Out’s spiritual belief that males and females, men and women, boys and girls do not exist and that these terms are discriminatory - 

"ensure all areas of their curriculum use language which is inclusive of gender diversity, sex and sexual diversity, for example instead of ‘male and female’, ‘boys and girls’, ‘ladies and gentlemen’, ‘mum or dad’, try ‘person’, ‘student’, ‘family’. Refer to the Inclusive Language Guidelines" 

This is equivalent to the department insisting that because religious belief (Islam or Christianity) is also a protected characteristic in the Tasmanian Anti-discrimination Act, all school documents must include reference to God, a soul, heaven and hell and wipe out anything other, otherwise they could be seen to be discriminatory.

Parents Disarmed and Students Identities Defined by the State and Working it Out

Parents have a right according to the Tasmanian Education Act, to exclude their child from activities they deem in conflict with their family's values.

Parents are unaware they can ask that their child not be involved in such ‘affirmation plan’ conferences, and that affirmation plans not be made: parents can demand to know how they, as parents, could be seen as 'unsafe' for not going along with 'affirmation plans' which have no evidence base and are not accompanied by any medical/full psychological evaluation of co-morbidities assessments (anxiety, depression). 


This is never made known to parents or teachers in this policy and its procedure manual or in training workshops, but parents and teachers are being bullied into thinking they have no rights. 
The department calls parents and caregivers bluff, by writing a policy which now places parents on the margins - at any age a child is asked if they want their parent’s involvement in such plans- and pits their child against them, enlisting groups like Working it Out (with an inherent bias towards its own un-scientific ideology) to act as unbiased 'mediators' and advocates for the child (which they are not qualified to do) when parents or caregivers refuse to affirm their child's 'gender identity, sexuality or body', despite evidence stating affirming the gender identity of a child or them wanting to nullify their body is not actually beneficial. 
There is no call to an independent social worker or psychologist - only to ones employed by the Department- to assess such unethical dynamics within a school which seeks to orchestrate 'affirmation plans'. And there is nothing in these workshops or policies educating teachers and students about the negative side effects of 'affirmation plans', or about listening to people like Mel Jefferies now undertaking a law suite and other Australian de transitioners and those overseas like Yarden Silveria and Chloe Cole harmed by affirmation plans and medical ‘affirming care’ pathways.
Other young detransitioners are beginning to speak out.

Despite these  law suites looming for education departments and doctors, Working it Out leads DECYP by the nose and  takes it upon themselves to decide what is in the best interests of the child.

Negative Side-effects of Affirmation Plans  Never Discussed or Documented

DECYP or the Tasmanian Professional Learning Institute (PLI) does not provide warnings to students and parents about the negative side effects of ‘affirmation plans’ so they can make informed choices.
The policy goes onto state: 

"If school staff decide to engage an external provider to provide one-on-one support to a child or young person at DECYP school sites, during school time, they must refer to the Working with External Support Providers in Schools Procedure which includes information on:

  • the duty of care to the safety, wellbeing and privacy of all students

  • parent/carer/guardian consent requirements

  • professional support staff (PSS) support to students who do not have the consent of a parent.The best interests of the child or young person are paramount and must always be the first consideration. 

     - School staff are to ask the student whether they have any objections to seeking parental consent, noting only one parent/carer/guardian (‘parent’) is required to provide consent, and it does not need to be the enrolling parent."

    Notifying only one parent and gaining only one parent’s consent to create affirmation plans is divisive and illegal when an affirmation plan has the potential to affect their child's physical and mental well-being detrimentally for life.

    The policy goes onto state:

    “This can be a complex space, particularly if one or more parent(s) is not supportive, and due consideration must be given to the young person’s safety and agency. If consent is not provided by a parent (and the young person is under 18 years old) and the school deems there is risk of harm to the student in not receiving support, a PSS member or School Nurse must provide support through the standard processes.

    Working It Out are funded by DECYP to support schools and LGBTIQA+ children and young people at school, and can provide specialist advice to professional support staff, school health nurses, principals and school staff in how to best support the student where consent has not been provided.

    When working with external providers to build staff capability more broadly, refer to the Professional Learning section of this Procedure."

Deliberate Confusion

Continuing on with this fraud, Working It Out intersperses and conflates the needs of students with 'intersex' DSD, into the conversation about gender identity and body affirmation, to justify the implementation of 'affirmation plans' and again placing parents and families on the margins of  these non- evidence based, harmful school interventions. This is despite the current law forbidding surgeries on intersex children because of past medical interference.

 The policy/procedure states:

"4.10 Supporting Gender Affirmation at school

‘Gender affirmation’ is an umbrella term for the range of actions and possibilities involved in living as one’s authentic gendered or non-gendered self.

‘Human Rights affirming care’ is a term used for a range of medical and non-medical interventions for intersex students to support their gender.

The gender affirmation or transition process is different for everyone, but it may involve changing names, title, appearance, clothing, use of pronouns, activities, and/or other aspects to align with a student’s authentic gender. Gender affirmation can take a staged approach and must be student-led. Each student’s journey will be different."

And yet there is no legal basis for this policy directive when supporting a gender identity is now shown to be harmful-
The policy/procedure states: "Schools must support students who want to socially affirm, transition their gender identity, or undergo interventions to support their gender at school."

This is a lie and against the law.
Conversely and in reality, Schools and families must do what is best for the child and implement world's best practice and evidence based practice which currently shows these absurd psycho-social interventions (affirmation plans)are bad for children and young people. 
This  article - Australian Doctors rethink Gender Affirming Care outlines the evidence affirmation plans are detrimental.

In fact, schools and Working it Out must comply with the Tasmanian Child Welfare Act and Education Act which sees parents and caregivers- with their values, culture and heritage- as central and to be respected,  especially when there is no scientific basis for a 'gender identity' and this is in itself a religious belief not the scope of a secular education which Tasmania’s Education Act states  must be presented to students.
The policy/procedure states: “At times this can be a complex space, particularly if one or more parent(s) is not supportive. Due consideration must be given to the young person’s safety and agency. When in doubt seek specialist advice from Working It Out (WIO)."

Like a grooming dynamic, the Department and Working it Out wedges itself between the parents and their child, name-calling and gaslighting parents as 'unsafe' when in fact affirming a gender via an 'affirmation plan' is actually 'unsafe' thereby bullying parents into thinking that by them not affirming their own child, they are harming their child, and perhaps that WIO and school staff will call social services to investigate the parents.This is a disastrous situation for vulnerable families in the Tasmanian community. Who decides parents are unsafe and on what grounds do they decide they're unsafe?


 DECYP's Supporting Sexuality, Sex and Gender Diversity in Schools procedure manual is extreme in its pronouncements: "DECYP Supporting Sexuality, Sex and Gender Diversity in Schools Procedure page 12 states: Gender affirmation at school: If a student requests to transition or affirm their gender identity within the school setting, a school leader in collaboration with a professional support staff member may initiate a meeting with the student and their family (if safe to do so) to identify their wellbeing needs, concerns and education support processes. Students may benefit from being supported by an appropriately trained professional support staff (for example, school social workers and school psychologists) at this time. Not every student’s family will be supportive of them affirming a gender which is different to their assigned gender at birth. Schools can seek advice from the Student Support Team and/or WIO if a student wishes to affirm their gender at school without parental support.

  • Staff are encouraged to attend appropriate training to develop an in-depth understanding of issues around gender negotiation, human rights affirming care and affirmation of gender.

    Further information:

  • Student Support Team

  • Working It Out (WIO) can assist school wellbeing staff to develop individual plans and/or gain the skills to develop plans, through dedicated training, resources, and additional support. Contact your school’s leadership if you are unsure about the first steps. 

    Yet Working it Out is not a psychological or medical organisation with any qualification to write or support school staff to write psychosocial intervention plans aka 'Affirmation Plans' for anyone, especially not for children. A recent post from WIO's Facebook site, states their new  Northern Tasmanian LGBTQA+ Inclusion Officer has no qualifications and is in the process of studying for a nursing degree.

    The Tasmanian Professional Learning Institute  

  • If it is known ‘affirmation planning' is actually not scientific and causes more mental health issues, then where have these ideas come from? 
  • If in fact an affirmative model causes higher suicide ideation and is not the best course of action when a child declares a new gender, or no gender or wishes to nullify their body parts, how has DECYP been captured by such ideas and allowed non teachers (indeed individuals with no qualifications) to teach children and devise 'affirmation plans'?
How is it possible, DECYP students can now be described in this teacher professional learning workshop as dismembered into a ‘gender, sexuality or body’?

Gender as Construct

Judith Butler’s ideological fingerprints are all over DECYP and ‘Working it Out’ (WIO) workshops. This way of seeing students is straight out of Butler’s manifesto in her book ‘Gender Trouble’ which deconstructs the differences in the human male and female body into simply different ‘orifices and surfaces’. Individual human identity, and the implications and ramifications of having a womb as opposed to testes (as Butler sees it) is just an outworking of societal power structures and socialisation. 

These ideas would not pass the Tasmanian parental ‘pub-test’, if they only knew what was going on.


The Tasmanian Department of Children and Young People (DECYP) workshops run by the political lobby group ‘Working it Out’ are pseudo-training sessions, in pseudo ideas. Teachers (primary, secondary: maths, art, science, woodwork, hospitality, English...) are encouraged to undertake a bizarre one day workshop, to learn how to devise ‘affirmation plans' for a student's 'gender or sexuality or body’ which actually violates students boundaries, societal norms, as well as evidence based understandings and legal requirements regarding student welfare and safeguarding. 

Teachers are not qualified to write such plans, nor do they have the skills to take into account the other issues students might be presenting with(co-morbidities like depression, anxiety, or neoro-diversities such as ASD, ADHD etc.) when writing such 'affirmation plans'.
The 2023 Cass Review and 2025 a US review into treating gender confused children, see social transition as contentious and detrimental to student welfare.

World’s best practice, which is evidence based practice, does not recommend affirmation of a child’s declared gender, let alone government departments and unqualified teachers writing psycho-social intervention plans for students to bizarrely 'affirm their body' and ‘express their sexuality and gender in the school setting’.
This if anything, is the scope of medical doctors and therapists, not teachers. How would teachers in any competent way, after a one day workshop, with no prior training in mental health or psychology, manage the complex psychological and physical needs of a student to write and implement such plans, even if they were ethical or valid? 
This is not the scope of schools but of sci-fi, paediatric asylum hospitals.

The State and 'Working it Out' as Intruder and Stasi of a Castration Cult 

When is it not appropriate to engage both parents on these issues or to decide just one parent needs to consent?
 
Who decides this, given teachers work within the Tasmanian Child Welfare Act and the Tasmanian Education Act which centres parents and families? 

Who decides when it’s appropriate to devise ‘an affirmation plan’ and what qualifications should they have to do so? Who is following up about the ramifications of such policies and procedures? 

What data is being kept about the long term ramifications of such plans on students and their families?

Along with this, multiple taxpayer funded workshops will train DECYP staff to foster 'student-lead Pride groups' to normalise gender confusion in students and advocate for affirmation plans. DECYP will arm staff with strategies to deal with any parental and staff 'resistance and backlash’ around these 'affirmation plans' and groups. What is actually deemed 'resistance and backlash'? Is it questioning and critical thinking?

Dovetailing into this is the inappropriate and harmful content in the new Respectful Relationships and Consent Resources which reinforces to students that:
- sex and gender are constructed and on a spectrum, 
 - and which see domestic violence as almost solely a consequence of 'gender stereotypes'.  The Man Box is a video used to train Tasmanian teachers on how boys need to change and it’s encouraged to be used in the classroom.


These resources (which this blog has critiqued) and links - for which the department is making it more difficult to navigate to, are here:

Respectful Relations and Consent Year 7 - 10

DECYP Birth to Kindergarten Resource


An Academic Elitist Diatribe

An ‘affirmation plan’ is actually an out working of Butler’s academic, elitist and performative understanding of gender and self. As such an ‘affirmation plan’ supplants onto the child a prescribed 'gender identity', a performative self (ironically based on regressive stereotypes) engineered between Working it Out and the student, and independent of family if need be - disregarding the realities and implications of the fixed differences in male and female bodies, as they navigate the world and wider society. 

What Butler sees in ‘affirmation plans’  is revolution and personal freedom, but the reality is it’s the State and organisations like Working it Out creating grooming relationships, locking children into a dysfunctional and maladaptive performative self, separate from true reality, at a developmentally vulnerable time in a child's life. Working it Out and DECYP are using fear and policy to trap and whip teachers and families into affirming these lies, ignoring the life long implications of such meddling.   

The majority of people would disagree with the cynicism and fracturing of the self which Butler and Working it Out spout: i. e, the splitting and dislocation of the self from a family’s values, any sense of sacredness, and the sexed body's reality. It completely negates and disallows discussion on the concept of a‘gender identity’ or the way humans interact and have survived amongst the natural environment for thousands and thousands of years. 

Instead, Working it Out and Butler overlay the self with maladaptive fetishes, which can actually be seen to be ironically gender stereotyping, normalising surgically/ pharmaceutically augmented bodies. They are lying to young people stating a 'gender identity' exists and that accompanying drugs, surgical procedures and the use of manipulative language, will be free from lifelong consequences.

Yet Butler’s academic, elitist theory is being foisted on Tasmanian teachers, parents and students (by stealth) without discussion and worse still, as if it’s truth and law.  
Elite ideologues such as Working it Out and DECYP's ‘education consultants’ are peddling child fetishes and fabrications of the human self.


DECYP's Professional Learning Institute and Working it Out are  in actual fact teaching alienation, dysfunction, broken school communities and fractured families. 

The ideological political lobby group ‘Working it Out’ is not qualified to teach teachers See blog post -

Working it Out is in fact, stuffing it up.

In this particular professional learning session titled ‘‘Supporting Sexuality and Gender in HPE” teachers are trained to support girls in P.E to  self harm by regarding breast- binding as ‘affirmative care’ and not as (VIDEO) -   self harm.  




WIO slide HPE Teachers workshop DECYP 2024

The Erasure of Girls 

This DECYP workshop, hosted by WIO, trains teachers to gaslight female students by supporting them to think self-harm is ‘gender affirming care’ and that protesting about boys using their changerooms or participating in their sports is harassment.

WIO slide HPE Teachers workshop DECYP 2024 

On top of this, this workshop re-educates the HPE teacher to use phrases like ‘person with uterus’ when teaching about a woman’s reproduction system to students.

WIO slide HPE Teachers workshop DECYP 2024


DECYP is in fact inciting staff to contravene evidenced based understandings around gender and sexuality using its politically and ideologically biased ‘Supporting Sexuality, Sex and Gender Diversity Policy’. Read policy here and read procedure here.

 The harm from such policies is now echoed around the world.


January Littlejohn discovered her daughter's school was using a ‘Gender Affirmation Plan’ without her knowledge or consent  - VIDEO: Transitioning her 13 year old daughter without  consent






The Tasmanian Professional Learning Institute Goes Rogue 

Ignoring the fact there are many marginalised groups in society, DECYP has acquiesced to the LGBTQA+ political and ideological lobby group WIO to implement a range of professional learning sessions - no less than 15 - just around this group over the next 8 months, rather than using money to support classroom pedagogy and the wider student population’s learning needs.

Ignore the Evidence and Soldier On

Despite intensive debate in broader society and understanding now around the need for students and schools to focus on collective shared values of excellence, respect, dignity and courage, DECYP ignores this and cultivates an emphasis on individualism and a child’s body and sexuality,  promoting the expression of different sexualities and diverse identities and ‘bodies’ , as if this was even the brief of a government secular education. It’s completely inappropriate for school staff to be inquiring about a child’s sexuality and making a plan for it. And yet, in 2025, they are.

Parent Consultation is an Afterthought 

Creating ‘affirmation plans’ which one would think would be the scope of a therapist, is now supposed to be in the tool kit of general school staff.  DECYP is leading its staff into professional malfeasance. 
Professional learning session descriptors highlight parent/family consultation around ‘gender affirmation plans’ is secondary to student voice, disregarding Tasmania’s  Child Welfare Act and the State’s Education Act which sees parents as primary in a child’s  life and education. DECYP’s content is unethical and could be seen as illegal.

Such ideas as ‘students seeking to affirm their identity in the school setting’ is completely at odds with unifying the student community, and to leave parents on the fringes of such social engineering, undermines safeguarding and the Tasmanian Education Act, not to mention the Tasmanian Welfare Act.
Video :Speak out against gender affirmation plans


Teachers cannot discuss their misgivings about such concepts when discussions are deemed backlash-
VIDEOS: Irish teacher speaks out about how education has dismantled gender.

Ignoring the Best 


Educators are well aware ‘Working it Out’ has a gender ideology platformed by DECYP’s Professional Learning Institute, which is at odds with best practice: that is those institutions and individuals  we see bravely pushing back the tide of educational malaise and victimhood  in communities of culture diversity and social disadvantage, because they do not indulge such divisive workshops. 
DECYP is ignoring establishments like the Michaela School where Katherine Birbalsingh has lead a school which extinguishes the highlighting of differences and disadvantage (a victim mentality) and has chosen instead a strict , disciplined educational environment which focuses on excellence and shared values such as human dignity, hard work, common unity and decency, enabling   students to thrive and think critically.
“Katharine Birbalsingh is the founder of, and headmistress at, Michaela Community School in London, which recently achieved some of the best GCSE results in the country. She's also a very well known commentator and educationalist. She is currently featuring in the ITV documentary 'Britain's strictest headmistress'. 
I spoke to her about why she believes progressive orthodoxies need to be challenged in education, what it's like to be a conservative teacher, whether teachers should return to work during the Coronavirus lockdown, and much more. 
Katharine Birbalsingh was recently appointed as chair of the social mobility commission. “
Documentary VIDEO  Michaela School




Further reading:

Affirmation rejected- an Open Letter to Health Professionals


School and WIO Gender Stasi - ‘What’s it like being a non-affirming parent’


A Death with no Funeral


Devastated








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