NHS England has set age seven as the minimum for gender identity clinic referrals, drawing both the support and ire of experts and campaigners. The Telegraph has the story.
In details of the new service to replace the controversial Tavistock clinic, NHS England has set out how it will limit the use of puberty blockers and ban activists and teachers from referring children for treatment.
For the first time, it has set a minimum age of seven for referral to the gender identity clinics.
These children will be offered psychological support and therapy that will focus on issues that may have led to their feelings about their gender.
However, experts have warned that the age restriction could still put young children with mental health problems on a “pathway to medical transition”.
Campaigners welcomed the “move toward an evidence-based approach”, but said there was still work to be done to ensure children are kept safe.
The NHS announced last year that it would be closing the Tavistock transgender clinic after a review by Dr. Hilary Cass found it was “not safe”.
It was the only NHS transgender clinic treating children and concerns were raised that young people were being rushed down a medical pathway.
The clinic is being replaced by a set of regional centres that will be led by medical doctors, rather than therapists, and consider the impact of other conditions such as autism and mental health issues.
The move came amid growing concern about the impact of gender ideology on children, including in schools where some were being socially transitioned without their parents’ consent.
NHS England said that a new service was needed because there was “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making” at the Tavistock clinic.
As part of the new approach, medics have been reminded that for “most” young people, the feeling of being in the wrong body is just a “phase” and does not persist into adulthood.
Officials have now set out their plan for how children will be able to access the service, which has been sent to experts for their input. The plans have been seen by the Telegraph.
The plans state: “Children under seven years of age may not be expected to have sufficiently developed their intellectual understanding of, and comprehension of, sex and gender to be able to understand the reasons for, and potential consequences of, a referral to a specialist gender incongruence service.”
By seven, children will “be more established within school, and education professionals and school nurses will be able to contribute to a general observational view as to the appropriateness of a referral”.
Previously, there was no minimum age for referral and children as young as three were treated by the Tavistock. On average, three children aged under seven were being referred every month.
Dr. David Bell, a consultant psychiatrist and former governor at the Tavistock before he became a whistleblower about the clinic’s work, said: “For me, there is a structural problem which needs particular caution: referring a child to a gender service, even if they are seen in the context of a multidisciplinary team, in that the mere fact of referral is consequential.
“It risks the child’s difficulties being viewed by themselves and their family as primarily to do with gender. Labelling the problem as a gender problem can easily be the first step on a pathway to medical transition.
“My view is that certainly for the younger ages, children should be managed within the context of the ordinary Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
“Their difficulties should not be designated as a gender problem, it is much more appropriate that they be seen as individuals who are distressed and this is one way in which that distress is expressed.”
Dr. Bell also described the definition of gender incongruence in childhood included in the specification as “dangerous”. It says it is characterised by “make-believe or fantasy play, toys, games, or activities and playmates that are typical of the experienced gender rather than the assigned sex”.
The definition, which comes from the World Health Organisation, is “completely the wrong way of looking at it”, said Dr. Bell.
He added: “We are corrupting a child’s capacity to have an imagination and imposing a gender stereotype on them.”
Worth reading in full.
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Agree with Dr Bell, and this guy nails the situation in 1min flat;
https://twitter.com/againstgrmrs/status/1687533749880160261
One more way to flush taxpayer money down the NHS toilet.
How to damage our children even more and destroy the female Identity
And masculinity
IABATO ! Is the only way to put it ! Children are not capable of critical thinking , letting media influenced so called adults do it for them is a recipe for disaster ! It’s the various ADULT collective ideas that are infecting these otherwise normal healthy kids ! Having any kind of clinic pandering to this cultish claptrap gives the it legitimacy!
My experience is that on trans issues children are at least as capable as adults in thinking critically – i.e. contrasting the crap they are being told with their real world experience and going, huh? What? – if not more.
They also understand power and the potential risks of confronting adults with their stupidity. But their silence shouldn’t necessarily be misinterpreted as agreement.
I’m disappointed , no one asked what IABATO meant
It’s John Wards actually ! It’s All Bollocks And That’s Official ! It most certainly is !
If this isn’t a blatant p*ss-take I don’t know what is! When demand for your Covid products is way down what to do? Well obviously make a killing with bringing drugs to the market for the disorders your products are responsible for causing in the first place. What a criminal business model!
”Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is set to cash in on new cardiovascular treatments as heart failure cases and related deaths skyrocket around the world.
Pfizer is now expanding into medications for heart inflammation by gaining dominant control of the cardiovascular treatments market.
The company has completed its purchase of Arena Pharmaceuticals for $6.7 billion.
Arena Pharma is a market leader in creating drugs to treat immuno-inflammatory diseases which are often caused by vaccine injuries.
Aamir Malik, Pfizer’s chief business innovation officer, celebrated the news in a statement about the acquisition.
“We believe this transaction represents the best next step for both patients and shareholders,” Malik said.
“With approximately 10 million DHF patient hospital visits expected in the U.S. by 2025 and few viable treatment options, we believe that APD418 has the potential to make a significant impact for these patients.”
The company is predicting at least 10 million new patients will be suffering from cardiovascular obstructions.”
https://slaynews.com/news/pfizer-cash-in-cardiovascular-treatments-heart-attack-deaths-skyrocket/
You left out the miracle weight loss drugs which you inject daily and which can be bought on the Internet, Ozempic, Pharma project its the next big jackpot bonanza, the fact it causes side effects as long as your arm, and on top creates suicidal thoughts both of which are acknowledged, does not stop Pharma and our wonderful health regulators and the puppets like Johnson, pushing the stuff on the population, Ching ching ching jackpot.
Here we have it, ladies and gents, Our Glorious NHS, mutilating healthy children.
I cannot see why transgender has got anything to do with the NHS at all? Feeling that you would rather wear a dress than trousers is not a life threatening issue like having a heart attack or being a road traffic casualty? This issue is a clear indication to me that the NHS urgently needs to be broken up.
The NHS deals with mental health problems. Or should I say tries to deal with mental health issues with very little success.
Either way, if trans issues were to be considered a mental health problem (as they mostly are) then it would be very much within its purvue.
Agree it’s a mental health issue and within NHS scope, just think having a dedicated clinic just for that gives it too much prominence- better to downplay and look at each person as a whole
IMO the NHS should not be spending any taxpayers money on hormone treatments or surgery related to trans gender concerns. If people want that sort of treatment then they should seek it via private or charitable sources.
Being trans-gender is not in itself a mental health issue, in the UK you are free to dress and look whatever way you like. It only becomes a mental health issue if you obsess over it to the extent that the balance of your mind is disturbed. But I stick with the view that drugs and surgery related to trans-gender should be totally outwith the NHS.
Depends what you mean by trans-gender. There used to be such a thing as a transvestite – men that dressed as women, wore makeup, fake boobs. I guess all of us have our foibles but I think that’s possibly a cause for concern, especially the fake boobs bit, though far less worrying than wanting surgery. There were also tomboys – possibly a bit less prominent and less stigmatized. I’m not really sure what the word gender means any more, and certainly am not sure what transgender means. I’d rather just stick with sex – male and female. Of course there are some more typically male behaviours and ways of looking, and some more typically female ones. Can we just go back to having girly girls and tomboys, and boyish boys and effeminate boys?
But yes I largely agree that the issue is not so much that you find yourself more at one of some spectrum but that you obsess over it and are no longer satisfied with just cross-dressing.
Yeah I agree. Can we also stop all the IVF treatments as well.
What is a “gender identity clinic”? Doesn’t it rather assume there is such a thing as “gender identity”? In that case, would such a clinic depend on its continued existence on perpetuating this idea, and would have something of a conflict of interest when “treating” its “patients”? I don’t think the NHS should have any such thing. I suppose if some private providers, catering for adults, want to do it and people can pay for it from their own pockets I would accept that, though if doctors were involved you’d have to question their adherence to “first do no harm”.
If some child is having serious mental health problems then those should be dealt with attempting to discover and address the underlying causes. If they persist in saying there is such a thing as “gender identity” they should be gently but firmly told there is no such thing, that it’s fine to be you, a girly or tomboy girl or a boyish or effeminate boy.
In terms of ‘transforming’ a child, would it not be less invasive, expensive and emotionally painful to use hormones to steer a child to become more happy within the body they have been born in?
Would it not be better to prescribe testosterone to a biological boy and oestrogen to a biological girl rather than vice versa? Counselling services could be used to support children to be accepting of the hand life has dealt them, become happy in their in own skin and understand that they might be gay rather than the opposite sex?
wouldn’t it be better to let the child be a child, be innocent, play, learn about its world through its own experiences, which includes as well as being happy, being sad, being bored, being frustrated sometimes. We do not want to become America, held and controlled by Big Pharma, where everything is answered by a pill.
Absolutely spot on!
First the health authorities and the Government told them they were vermin who would kill their Grandparents, they shoved big cotton sticks up their noses and down their throats for a disease they don’t get, they forced their little faces into masks, such that they couldn’t breathe properly, see and thus they cannot communicate properly, they closed their playgrounds, schools, stopped them meeting other children to play with. Now they teach them how to Mas you know the rest, perform an you know the rest as young as kindergarten, they tell them that they are not the sex they were born into and if Mummy and Daddy bring them to see the Doctor he can give them magic pills to turn them into something else.
What a monster show the NHS and its complying, and therefore complicit employees is, why aren’t the Nurses, Doctors, Porters etc striking and protesting about the cruelty being institutionalised to children?. Where is the Government in this? Quiet once again as it would prefer injuries and cruelty to non voting children than saying no to a minority of wicked Adults who get a personal thrill from damaging children in the name of their cult.
1000+
NHS and all personnel that haven’t spoken out by now are a national disgrace. I loathe them all. This applies here;
https://twitter.com/CartlandDavid/status/1687484174507085824
What makes me utterly livid about this, child welfare apart, is the experience of two female work colleagues. One was incapacitated by extreme pain every month by endometriosis. She didn’t want children and in her mid thirties begged the NHS for a hysterectomy. Refused time after time as she didn’t apparently know her own mind and might want children later. The other colleague is debilitated by persistent haemorrhaging in the perimenopause. Again, hysterectomy refused by doctors. These are grown women treated like children, yet children can get gender surgery?
Policies tend to be supportive of actions that degrade or destroy life at great social and financial cost. Improving quality of life is not deemed as worthy for whatever reason. If you look at it that way, the situation is as expected.
Yup been there done that. Only way I got the much needed hysterectomy was to pay privately for a tubal ligation. The surgeon who operated on me for that was the guy I worked with in the NHS – strange that – not.
If there’s any “social transitioning” going on in schools without parents consent (or even with consent, come to that) as Alison Pearson’s excellent article outlines, swift retribution in the form a left cross should be meted out to the guilty teacher. Whilst Alison’s article invokes the values of Dickens, it begins with a reference to Australia where there should be no shortage of folk only too willing exact physical retribution for purveying this nonsense.
We’re allowing children to be experimented on and mutilated because we don’t have the courage to call this out. We cannot fall any further.
This utterly disgusting and deranged NHS policy is more evidence that they are coming for our children…
State endorsed child abuse! Why is it I’m not horrified any more? All of this once abhorrent crap is now normal, the western world has lost its way!
Let’s all stand and clap for the NHS! Cut the cocks and tits off children! Brava
Don’t care – destroy as many lives as you see fit.
Oh, another ‘Victor’ moment!
https://twitter.com/catshouldnt/status/1687577386081206275/photo/1
If you’re woke and deranged enough to want this for your children then it should be private only, leave the NHS resources for cancer patients who have been waiting far too long for treatment.
Yes, let’s all stand outside and applaud the useless NHS for sticking two fingers up to the society they’re supposed to care for. Time to close it down.