AIBU to think this became a political issue where children are just pawns?

People have been campaigning for them to get that support,. They could never get it if they were funnelled out of MH services and into GIDs. Which they were being. We were not campaigning from an ideological position, but from one that had at its heart the basic principles of health care and an evidence base.

I am not sure why you are so angry at the people who want, as you do, for children and young people to get appropriate, holistic healthcare, and have fought for them to at least be pathwayed into the right services.

Yes those services are underfunded and understaffed, yes this is a national scandal, as is state of all of the NHS. But acknowledging MH services are under resourced, is not a reason NOT to fight when you see children with MH problems being funnelled into an inappropriate system which would harm them.

Many people have been "looking at the real issue" for years, OP.

Those people have had their names dragged through the mud.

JK Rowling has been raising awareness about this, both from a women's rights and a child safeguarding perspective, for over five years. For Julie Bindel, it has been closer to 20 years.

Many people in the healthcare sector, from clinicians at the now closed Tavistock clinic who blew the whistle on these practices years ago, to James Esses who was kicked off his psychotherapy degree course for opposing the affirmation only approach to transgender healthcare, have been speaking out about this for years, at enormous personal cost.

I hope they will now be vindicated.

I agreed with your last sentence and it isn’t just gender that is an issue but MH as a whole. How are they getting away with it? Children and young people are given medication for a whole host of things because therapy , diagnostics and other treatment seems to be non existent . They know how bad things are across the board and they’ve stood back and done nothing.

Young people weren't being offered adequate mental health support prior to life changing consequences

I wouldn't have trusted under 16 me to make the right decisions for my long term health...

But your kid will die unless you let them reject the body they're born into and everything that comes with it? We can't even give them a chance to come to terms with what hand they're given in life? Promoting acceptance of reality causes suicides?

I'd have been a lot happier if people let me smoke, drink, take recreational drugs, have underage sex, and skip maturing before given the green light for it to be on me ... at the time but it wouldn't have exactly set me up well and would have been ridiculous

If an identity crisis isn't a mental health problem idk what should be anymore... let's just call it that and let kids stay kids

Thank you Rhubarb. I completely agree. MH services for children have been generally in woeful decline (like much of the NHS unfortunately ) and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency as it’s too important to ignore.

Lion is directly quoting JKR, as you mentioned her Stormy

The Cass report found that co-morbidities had for group question gender been ignore and focus was solely on gender - one of the major ways these children had been let down.

The Cass report happened because people raised concerns and refused to shut up and be dismissed.

I think the Cass report is a good thing to improve services and fact many are now openly accepting the recommendations is a good thing. Also have have seen some media focus on wider mental health services especially for young people in media - and media and political focus can lead to more money.

There was at start of week a lot about long waiting lists for ASD and ADHA diagnoses - my kids have been caught up in these. So I think it's generally a good thing acknowledgement that mental health services especially for young are not enough at the minute which finger crossed may lead to some more cash or focus on them.

“You cheered it on. You did all you could to impede and misrepresent research. You tried to bully people out of their jobs for opposing you….”

What are you on about?

I disagree. Those young people remain vulnerable to the proven harmful effects of a regressive, unscientific ideologgy which does not support equality or evidence based practise. We need to understand the conditions which allowed a male supremacist regime to control health services in order to offer those children proper help.

Better mental health support for all children struggling emotionally would be a good start. Many of these children are languishing on waiting lists, not just gender questioning children. Mental health care needs to be available to all children and would be a good investment from a public health point of view. But this support needs to be evidence based and holistic, not ideologically driven.

With the greatest respect this isn’t about campaigners or about their ideology. It’s about young people who need help and support when MH services in this country have been decimated. That needs to be the focus now not ideology.

Stormy I genuinely think we are on the same page here. Many of us are struggling with woeful provision for our young people.
It’s just that the ideology and political wrangling are preventing provision and actually limit the options for children. That’s why we’re challenging it so strongly.

And..

You’re talking nonsense; you probably know that really, but just in case you’re genuinely poorly read..

Rowling laying it out clearly and eloquently on the Cass Report: "Today's not a triumph, it's the laying bare of a tragedy."

‘Over the last four years, Hilary Cass has conducted the most robust review of the medical evidence for transitioning children that's ever been conducted. Mere hours after it was released to the press and public, committed ideologues are doubling down.

These are people who've deemed opponents 'far-right' for wanting to know there are proper checks and balances in place before autistic, gay and abused kids - groups that are all overrepresented at gender clinics - are left sterilised, inorgasmic, lifelong patients.

I understand that the review's conclusions will have come as a seismic shock to those who've hounded and demonised whistleblowers and smeared opponents as bigots and transphobes, but trying to discredit Hilary Cass's work isn't merely misguided. It's actively malign.

Even if you don't feel ashamed of cheerleading for what now looks like severe medical malpractice, even if you don't want to accept that you might have been wrong, where's your sense of self-preservation? The bandwagon you hopped on so gladly is hurtling towards a cliff.

And if I sound angry, it's because I'm bloody angry. I read Cass this morning and my anger's been mounting all day. Kids have been irreversibly harmed, and thousands are complicit, not just medics, but the celebrity mouthpieces, unquestioning media and cynical corporations.

The consequences of this scandal will play out for decades. You cheered it on. You did all you could to impede and misrepresent research. You tried to bully people out of their jobs for opposing you. Young people have been experimented on, left infertile and in pain.

I thought the last tweet was going to be my last, but I just burst into tears. The #CassReview may be a watershed moment, but it comes too late for detransitioners who've written me heartbreaking letters of regret. Today's not a triumph, it's the laying bare of a tragedy.’

@St0rmyDay555
The two things aren't mutually exclusive. I can see you're frustrated that people are talking about the Cass report when you're struggling with childhood MH services (whether they are gender related in your case or not). But it is a big ideological rift that does affect how children's services are run, so it is inevitable that it will be debated, discussed and argued over.

I don't believe that any of that prevents wider discussion of children's mental health service funding.

@St0rmyDay555
I’m not a TRA whatever that is just a parent living with suicide risk and wanting focus to be on the young people at the heart of this instead of political debate

If you had been following this debate you would know that holding young people at the heart is exactly what every campaigner against the approach at GIDs has been doing. What do you think the motivation has been if not that? People are concerned about young people not getting the support they need but instead being set on pathways that not only will not deal with their underlying mental health issues, but will add another on top if they are put on a medical pathway to transition. That's exactly what the feminists on here and elsewhere and other campaigners have been arguing.

People are probably reacting strongly to you as it is very tiresome to have been bullied, harassed, slurred and attacked for years and then even when we are proved correct through this report, people are still trying to find ways to deride us, by saying they didn't listen as we were toxic (we weren't) or we just want a political debate ( we want politicians to do their job and stop children being harmed and women being harmed by decisions made in publicly funded institutions, and wider society).

I am sorry about child and hope they get the support they need.

I don’t. I want proper care for all young people struggling with mental health but it isn’t there. I simply want the focus to be on that not ideology and political wrangling.

The dire state of provision should be the focus but it isn’t because nobody is debating it or focusing on it. It gets drowned out. Look at this thread. It’s the same as all the others.

What a really unpleasant post. I’m flabbergasted that you can be so dismissive. Autism and struggles with gender are known to be common. Suicidal idealisation is well known to be higher when there is autism involved too. CAMHS now sadly only seem to take on extreme cases of MH so pretty sure suicidal idealisation and self harm figures would be high for CAMHs patients dentist.

https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/improving-care/nccmh/suicide-prevention/workshops-(wave-4)/wave-4-workshop-2/suicide-and-autism---slides.pdf?sfvrsn=bf3e0113_2

I’m not a TRA whatever that is just a parent living with suicide risk and wanting focus to be on the young people at the heart of this instead of political debate.

I don’t understand why we are continually being pushed to treat gender questioning children differently and offer them completely sub standard care. Why are these kids being targeted for experimental treatments that have no basis whatsoever in science?

We’d never do that to children with cancer, diabetes or any other health issue. Stormy id genuinely like to hear why you want to divert these kids away from properly developed healthcare options?

There's countless threads on FWR discussing GIDS, Tavistock, Sandyford, concerns about the effects of puberty blockers which were being wrongly described as 'reversible', concerns about the high incidence of girls with co-morbidities expressing a wish to transition, concerns about Gender GP and the unquestioning push towards medicialisation, discussions about 'watchful waiting' etc etc. Worries about safeguarding children who are gender questioning have been expressed on the FWR since before 2012, with several posters with foresight being banned for bringing up these issues before it was on anyone's radar.

So any chat about there being no concern about children's wellbeing is just nonsense.

@St0rmyDay555 please stop with the dead child bs every peer reviewed study says its just not true. Even polly carmichel (whilst still running the Tavistock) had to admit in crt that children with gender dysphoria are no more likely to kill themselves than any other cahms patient. The 40% statistic that the TRAs and scot gov love to bang on about is beyond useless as it comes from a biased survey that was to small and was not even aimed at trans people but the entire LGBTQ+ community. What the survey showed was that 13 people out of 27 respondents answered yes to the question have you ever thought about suicide, not have you considered or tried to commit suicide, so a very loose woolly question open to misinterpretation and aimed at the entire rainbow not just trans people with a tiny sample size of 27 people.

I am however grateful to you for displaying exactly why you and all your TRA friends should be kept away from all decision making when it comes to the medical care that is offered to children with gender issues. So thanks for that

Both can happen. Obviously. Effectively you're saying that anyone who mentions gender ideology, despite the vast damage that does to children, women and to be honest some vulnerable men, doesn't care about mental health provision because if we did, we'd use that time and energy instead to talk about that. Which is clearly a very, very silly thing to say but I guess if you're completely married to an ideology that has been proven to be a tool of the oppressors then it take some time to acknowledge the true horror of what you've supported. The reality is that children's mental health will improve when we dismantle gender ideology even if we don't create more services (which we should).

Provision and care should be the same for any other child. Diagnosis, assessment of needs, evidence based treatment and a rock solid commitment to safeguarding in each and every case.

with nobody looking at the real issue, which is providing treatments to vulnerable children before they're mature enough in the name of progress

You are being unreasonable for this this comment. Plenty of people were looking at this issue and kept speaking up on it, and were being attacked and hounded for doing so, for years and years.

If those brave and selfless women and men had not kept on speaking up, this may have been allowed to carry on.

Its disappointing that you are not applauding these campaigners who have been vilified for years, instead you seem to be pretending they never even existed.

But then, everyone is pretending they did not exist. Where are the accolades and thanks for those who spoke out? Those finally saying 'of course Cass is right that we need an evidence base' are the same ones who have ignored campaigners or, attacked them or supported those who attacked them.

Its a really unedifying sight. I don't normally like pile-ons on politicians as I think they do a hard job. But watching politicians who have thrown campaigners under the bus for years,. now getting fully behind the Cass report whilst refusing to acknowledge those who have been speaking out for years, has really disillusioned me. I understand why people have lost trust in politicians now. You can't watch that cynical self serving display and still respect them.

or the conservatives celebrating it as their proof that the wokism should be over.

An awful lot of left wing people and people very neutral coming from medical/science stance have been branded right wing or hate filled conservatives engaging in cultural war to shut them up and dismiss their often valid concerns.

They've often been shouting their concerns and living with real life consequences of doing so while being completely ignore and attacked - this report says yes they were right - so now the tactic is well they were part of the problem. I was on a thread yesterday where a poster summed up Yvette Cooper comments - Ahh so they would have listened sooner if we'd not said anything?

Pressure groups should have been no where near clinical decision making which should have had proper research baked approached - children well being should always have come first.