Two mothers are suing the NHS, calling for equal safeguards and assessment protocols across adult gender clinics and those for minors, in order to safeguard vulnerable individuals seeking transgender healthcare. The Telegraph has the story.
NHS England (NHSE) is putting trans teenagers at “unreasonable risk of irreversible harm”, the head of a gender clinic will warn in a legal battle over treatment.
Two mothers are suing the health service over concerns that as soon as a teenager turns 17, they can transfer to adult gender clinics and be fast-tracked to surgery and sex-change drugs.
This is despite a recent crackdown on treatment for under-18s, including a ban on puberty blockers and a guarantee of assessment of underlying mental-health conditions and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism before treatment is given for gender issues.
The mothers, who both have “vulnerable” teenage daughters seeking sex-change surgery, are now taking the case to the High Court in an attempt to force NHSE to guarantee the same protections at adult clinics.
Dr. Karl Neff, a consultant endocrinologist and the head of Ireland’s National Gender Service, will warn the judge that the treatment currently offered to adults in England “will not fully meet their needs or offer them adequate protection and thereby will place them at unreasonable risk of irreversible harm”.
The judge will hear that in 2019, 17 year-olds made up 18% of referrals to adult gender services, the largest single group by age. Since then, NHSE has written to all those of that age who were on the Tavistock waiting list telling them that instead they will go straight to the adult clinic. …
Anna Castle, one of the mothers bringing the case, said that “something needs to be done about the lack of evidence-based and multi-disciplinary care and the fact that our children and vulnerable people are being sent on a one-way pathway without having any of their other conditions considered”.
Ms. Castle, whose daughter suffers with ADHD, has autistic traits and decided she was a boy during lockdown, said that sex-change surgery ”is the most extreme decision anyone could make about their body”.
“But it has the least amount of safeguarding and preliminary investigation into whether it is actually necessary and then there is no evidence as to whether it actually helps,” she added.
Worth reading in full.
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