Helen Webberley

@Signalbox

I'm not sure how you would be able to prove lack of consent

I think that's a fairly straightforward matter of record keeping or more to the point no records = no consent.

Happy to be corrected

What qualifications do their salesmen counsellors have?

Marianne Oakes
(BACP and Pink Therapy qualifications)

"As a fully qualified counsellor, with a post grad diploma in Gender Sexuality and Diverse Relationships, Marianne is our most experienced counsellor in the field of transgender care. She heads up our team of specialist gender counsellors at GenderGP. Marianne combines her own experiences as a trans woman with her affinity for others going through their own gender journey. She came into this particular branch of therapy after struggling to find someone who could support her with her own transition. Marianne brings a unique insight to her practice, both from her own first hand experiences and her understanding of the impact which transition can have on families and loved ones. She enjoys working with people of all ages, including children and their families, creating a non-judgmental space in which parents can talk openly about their own issues in relation to their child’s transition"
www.gendergp.com/meet-the-team/

"July 2018: My trans journey to date
In September 2015 I visited my GP to ask for a referral to the Sheffield GIC and, despite his ignorance to the protocols, a week later my referral had been submitted. This was three months after I had qualified as a therapeutic counsellor, with a view to realising my dream of working as a female therapist.

In January 2016, I set up a private practice and advertised my services in Pink therapy. Low and behold, a month later this eager woman called me to ask if I would be interested in helping her with trans clients. Delighted, I accepted. This turned out to be my first experience of GenderGP and the wonderful Dr Helen Webberley. I will admit now, having heard the horror stories of endless waiting lists on the NHS, that I did consider my private options. It was clear that I would have been a suitable candidate for accessing the services of GenderGP, however, I was concerned there might be a conflict of interest. Keen to keep my focus and do my work to the best of my ability I decided to stick with Plan A. Some 14 months after my referral I was offered my first appointment at Sheffield. I put on my best dress and did my hair and off I went. It was December 2016. I told them my story and it was explained to me that I would have another three appointments within a six month period. At that point I would be put forward for treatment. It was an exciting time and I was happy to wait. My initial appointments went well, I thought, and I was on track for receiving the treatment I so craved. But nothing came. No letter, no appointment. Nothing. Two years passed. Then a letter arrived, it was an appointment with the voice coach. I was delighted and waiting with bated breath for more news. Maybe treatment would be quick to follow. It wasn’t. By October (some two years after my initial referral) I faltered and approached Dr Webberley for help. I needed hormones and the situation was becoming increasingly frustrating. I was living and working as the woman I have always known I was, but wasn’t able to access the treatment I needed to feel complete. I spoke to my voice coach and she did a little digging. According to my records, she said, I should have received a letter two months earlier detailing my treatment pathway. Needless to say I never received the letter. Luckily, she managed to get a copy sent to me. Back on track with the NHS, I put GenderGP on hold. As a counsellor, specialising in the treatment of gender variant patients, this insight into the experiences of those seeking treatment via the NHS was proving invaluable" (continues)
www.gendergp.com/my-story-marianne-oakes/

Well, in the case of one 'pathway adviser', the qualifications and experience shown on LinkedIn are:

GCSEs and A levels - no mention of higher education of any kind
Level 1 Award in Community Sports Leadership
RAF cadet civilian instructor
4.5 years as a croupier
5 years managing a travel money bureau
Active in Green Party politics, including most recently being Co-Chair of the Green Party Women

I imagine what swung it for this person to get the job with Gender GP is being a transwoman. I'm not clear what pathway adviser means. First point of contact?

Just popping on to say thank you so much for the font of information and interesting discussion on this thread.

Too long a story to tell but I am aware of another (in)famous in his field doctor who has an upcoming hearing in front of MPTS and the similarities between him and HW are stark. Completely different area of medicine but some classic traits in both personalities IMO.

Btw, I saw some commentary on Twitter of the BITE model of control in relation to HW, has this been mentioned here?

freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/

It was signed by a doctor in Romania, who the Telegraph has identified as a geriatrician also trained in administering Botox. GenderGP does not offer patients the chance of an appointment with her, even though she authorises the medication.

It’s bonkers to suggest that these people care about their ‘patients’ or that any of them should be regarded as experts n their field.

An undercover Telegraph reporter posing as a 15-year old girl was prescribed testosterone – the male hormone, which is a controlled drug – after just two Skype appointments with counsellors and one Skype appointment with a doctor at the online clinic.

What qualifications do their salesmen counsellors have?

Telegraph
'How children can order life-altering transgender drugs from their bedroom
Online healthcare clinic uses loophole to flout NHS rules and prescribe sex change drugs to under 16s without parental consent'
By Investigations Team
26 February 2021
(extract)
An undercover Telegraph reporter posing as a 15-year old girl was prescribed testosterone – the male hormone, which is a controlled drug – after just two Skype appointments with counsellors and one Skype appointment with a doctor at the online clinic.

Staff never asked to speak to her parents nor demand proof that any adult knew of her plans to transition, beyond a single email from a 20-year-old half-brother confirming that he would pay for treatment.

Lead counsellor, Marianne Oakes, said they did not require her parents’ “permission”.
Staff accepted at face value the reporter’s stated belief that she was really male, telling her “we’re not worried about your truth because there’s no debate about that”.
GenderGP defended its practices on Thursday, claiming that “not all parents are supportive” and that when a young patient is able to consent to their treatment “in their own right, then that treatment can be appropriate and necessary”. (continues)

The reporter, posing as a 15-year-old, received a prescription for a four-month supply of 'Testogel', during which time her voice could irreversibly deepen and facial hair start to grow.
It was signed by a doctor in Romania, who the Telegraph has identified as a geriatrician also trained in administering Botox. GenderGP does not offer patients the chance of an appointment with her, even though she authorises the medication. Instead they are directed to a doctor in Egypt, who told the reporter that it was “excellent” that, aged 15, she knew she never wanted to have children."(continues)

archive.fo/EKbP5
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/26/children-can-order-life-altering-transgender-drugs-bedroom/

Screenshot H/t JammersMinde (Twitter)

There are few people with the right skills because there is no training because there is no evidence.

Partly because research that might not generate the ‘right’ results is blocked and some people who would benefit more from other mental health services all face long waiting lists.

The bridging services suggested by Webberley would not help waiting lists if what she means is allowing GPs to prescribe puberty blockers on demand.

Serious question - why do some people find it hard to believe that she is a simple grifter? Not sure why we have to be trying to soften her documented unscrupulous actions with excuses about her sincere belief or a saviour complex.

I'll give you that she has an ego. But surely the evidence is mountainous of cynically exploiting vulnerable people wherever the margins look most lucrative? Is it because people find it hard to countenance that a doctor would behave this way? Because I submit that is exactly how someone manages to grift their way into harming a lot of people, and holding out false hope to many via mendacious and money grubbing behaviour.

The Scottish Greens had a similar focus last year - more funding into GICs to sort the appalling waiting lists (and they are appalling, no arguments there from me).

Money won't fix it though. The issue is staffing. There are few people with the right skills because there is no training because there is no evidence. Plus, I imagine that any population group who has had to wait a long time to be seen will be quite intense to work with. I speculate that is part of the reason for the waiting lists, staff go on maternity leave or move and places aren't filled and so the waiting list goes up.

So, where are we going to get the workforce from?

I'm no psychologist but HW does seem to have some kind of saviour complex and I think she's using this situation to 'fight for trans healthcare rights', despite the fact it's doing nothing of the sort. But then again, maybe she's working from the perspective that even bad publicity is good publicity as it'll get people talking. It'll certainly continue to lift her profile amongst the trans community and despite most people being horrified by her practices, many of her target audience will applaud what she's doing and continue to support her. See also, Andrew Wakefield.

Helen Webberley launched this petition to Caroline Noakes MP(Cons) (Minister for Equalities (Department for International Development) and nine other decision makers three years ago:

'Transgender Healthcare Services In The UK Are Broken - URGENT Improvements Are Needed'
(extract)
We are calling for:

• NHS waiting times for gender diverse patients of all ages to be urgently reviewed.
• Clear options on interim solutions to be made available to people while waiting for their NHS appointment.
• Assessment and treatment pathways to be modernised.
• Alternate healthcare solutions to be recognised.
• Clear information on how best to support gender-diverse patients in a primary care setting to be cascaded to those working in primary and secondary care.
• Clear guidelines so that GPs feel empowered to offer support, including bridging prescriptions and shared care agreements, where requested.
• Private care to be made available without retribution or consequences to the patient (as laid out in the NHS constitution). (continues)

Initial signatories were:
Dr Helen Webberley, GP and Gender Specialist
Dr Mike Webberley, Consultant Physician and Gender Specialist

Ali Camps, Co-Chair of Pride in London
Annette Pryce, NUT (Section) LGBT+ Executive Member
Aydin Olson-Kennedy LCSW, Executive Director Los Angeles Gender Center
Bernard Reed OBE, MA, MBA, Trustee, Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES)
Capt Catherine Burton FRAeS
Chay Brown, Trans Actual UK
Christine Burns MBE., MSc., C.Eng., MBCS, Author; Trans Britain
Dominic Davies, CEO Pink Therapy
Dr Adrian Harrop, ST3 Registrar in General Practice; LGBTQ+ campaigner
Dr Ben Vincent, BA (Cantab) MPhil PhD, Chair, Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES)
Dr Heather Peto, LGBT Labour Transgender Officer
Dr Meg-John Barker, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, The Open University
Dr Ruth Pearce, Research Fellow, University of Leeds
Dr Carol Steele B.Sc., Ph.D.
Dr Norman Spack, Founder of 1st USA clinic to medically treat adolescents with gender dysphoria, at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Edward Lord OBE, JP Chair Establishment Committee, City of London Corporation (personal capacity)
Ellen Murray, Executive Director TransgenderNI
Heather Paterson, LGBT+ Campaigner and Community Worker
Iain McCallum, Advisor All About Trans
India Willoughby, Broadcaster & Journalist
Jane Fae, Writer
Jay Stewart, Gendered Intelligence
Jennie Kermode, Chair, Trans Media Watch
Jenny-Anne Bishop OBE, All Wales Gender Identity Partnership Group
Juno Roche, writer and campaigner
Karen Pollock MBACP, Counsellor Northumberland
Kate Adir, Trans advocate
Kate Hutchinson, Director at Wipe Out Transphobia
Katherine O’Donnell, Journalist, LGBTI rights campaigner & Equality Network Trustee
Kellie Maloney, Former Boxing promoter. Broadcaster and diversity Speaker
Marianne Oakes Dip Couns
Michelle Ross, Founder and Director cliniQ
Munroe Bergdorf, Model and Social Activist
Natacha Kennedy, Goldsmiths College and University College London
Natalie Washington, Transgender advocate
Neville Southall, ex goalkeeper for Everton FC
Paul Farrelly, MP
Prof. Stephen Whittle, OBE, PhD, DLaws hc, FAcSS, MA, LLB, BA, Professor of Equalities Law, The Manchester Law School, Vice President and Head of Legal Services
Sally Jane Coles B.Sc child health, RGN,NMP
Sophie Cook, Writer and Broadcaster
Sue Pascoe, LGBT+ Conservative Council Member
Tara Hewitt Leadership & Inclusion Consultant Co-founder Trans Equality Legal Initiative
Terry Reed OBE, JP, BA (Hons), MCSP, SRP, Grad. Dip. Phys, Trustee, Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES)

Organisations:
Gendered Intelligence
Press For Change
Lincs Parents of LGBT

there are 27,335 supporters

NB I have not linked due to MN rules

TIBTOM it seems that each assums the other ensures appropriateness of the prescription, has assessed the evidence base, considered differential diagnoses, and obtained informed consent. So neither do.

of course. an endo doesn't know autism and a psychiatrist doesn't know hormones. so neither have the skills to fully assess a patient who has googled and sometimes been coached, knows what they want and will accuse transphobia or gatekeeping if they don't get it.

shit.

I would guess that every doctor accused of similar practices claims to be helping people.

To state the obvious, both Shipman and Ian Paterson had patients who gave testimonies in support of them.

I'm no psychologist but HW does seem to have some kind of saviour complex

How do you justify flogging NHS drugs off the back of a virtual lorry? By claiming you are helping people.

The link to mermaids would have provided a lot of affirmation, but failures in basic care e.g. keeping proper records indicates that buyers were treated as customers, not patients.

I would guess that every doctor accused of similar practices claims to be helping people.

HW has been determined that this hearing will be about the state of trans healthcare and her representative seems to following these instructions closely. The GMC rep has made it very clear that the hearing is not about this, but about her conduct as a doctor and whether she met the required standards. Her approach reeks of obfuscation, and reminds me of frustrating Twitter arguments where is clear neither party are actually arguing about the same thing.

I'm no psychologist but HW does seem to have some kind of saviour complex and I think she's using this situation to 'fight for trans healthcare rights', despite the fact it's doing nothing of the sort. But then again, maybe she's working from the perspective that even bad publicity is good publicity as it'll get people talking. It'll certainly continue to lift her profile amongst the trans community and despite most people being horrified by her practices, many of her target audience will applaud what she's doing and continue to support her. See also, Andrew Wakefield.

"Chair confirms documents including Bell V Tavistock, Patient A’s mother’s complaint are now uploaded. Chair invites IS to continue with cross-examination of GB."

Helen Webberley Tribunal Tweets

Professor Gary Butler (UCLH)
"In answering IS’s question, GB states that Endocrinologists have adequate training and would be able to deal with inducing puberty in gender variance with ‘their assigned gender’. Another paediatrician wouldn’t have the training, without the specialism."

Presumably orthopedic surgeons have adequate training to remove healthy limbs. That ability is not however reason that they should do so.

Atlantic
'A New Way to Be Mad'
The phenomenon is not as rare as one might think: healthy people deliberately setting out to rid themselves of one or more of their limbs, with or without a surgeon's help. Why do pathologies sometimes arise as if from nowhere? Can the mere description of a condition make it contagious?

By Carl Elliott
DECEMBER 2000

(extract)
"In January of this year British newspapers began running articles about Robert Smith, a surgeon at Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary, in Scotland. Smith had amputated the legs of two patients at their request, and he was planning to carry out a third amputation when the trust that runs his hospital stopped him. These patients were not physically sick. Their legs did not need to be amputated for any medical reason. Nor were they incompetent, according to the psychiatrists who examined them. They simply wanted to have their legs cut off. In fact, both the men whose limbs Smith amputated have declared in public interviews how much happier they are, now that they have finally had their legs removed. (continues)

"It was the most satisfying operation I have ever performed," Smith told a news conference in February. "I have no doubt that what I was doing was the correct thing for those patients." Although it took him eighteen months to work up the courage to do the first amputation, Smith eventually decided that there was no humane alternative. Psychotherapy "doesn't make a scrap of difference in these people," the psychiatrist Russell Reid, of Hillingdon Hospital, in London, said in a BBC documentary on the subject, called Complete Obsession, that was broadcast in Britain last winter. "You can talk till the cows come home; it doesn't make any difference. They're still going to want their amputation, and I know that for a fact." Both Smith and Reid pointed out that these people may do themselves unintended harm or even kill themselves trying to amputate their own limbs. As the retired psychiatrist Richard Fox observed in the BBC program, "Let's face it, this is a potentially fatal condition." (continues)

In 1977 the Johns Hopkins psychologist John Money published the first modern case history of what he termed "apotemnophilia"—an attraction to the idea of being an amputee. He distinguished apotemnophilia from "acrotomophilia"—a sexual attraction to amputees. The suffix -philia is important here. It places these conditions in the group of psychosexual disorders called paraphilias, often referred to outside medicine as perversions. Fetishes are a fairly common sort of paraphilia. In the same way that some people are turned on by, say, shoes or animals, others are turned on by amputees. Not by blood or mutilation—pain is not usually what they are looking for. The apotemnophile's desire is to be an amputee, whereas the acrotomophile's desire is turned toward those who happen to be amputees." (continues)

The comparison of limb amputation to sex-reassignment surgery comes up repeatedly in discussions of apotemnophilia, among patients and among clinicians. "Transsexuals want healthy parts of their body removed in order to adjust to their idealized body image, and so I think that was the connection for me," the psychiatrist Russell Reid stated in the BBC documentary Complete Obsession. "I saw that people wanted to have their limbs off with equally as much degree of obsession and need and urgency." (continues)
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

Robert Smith was banned from carrying out futher amputations of healthy limbs (these were deemed unethical) but was not found to have acted unprofessionally. He retired in 2013:
www.pressreader.com/uk/the-courier-advertiser-angus-and-the-mearns-edition/20130426/281728382012859

2017 Russell Reid faced disciplinary proceedings from GMC
Guardian
"A member of the parliamentary forum on transsexualism, Dr Reid has campaigned for equal rights for transsexuals and is very popular with some sections of the transgender community who refer to him affectionately as "Uncle Russell".

He has worked for the NHS, including at the main gender clinic at Charing Cross hospital, in west London, and in private practice."
www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/may/25/health.society
This article may prove useful when the names of the professionals working in GICs who have reported Helen Webberley are released

Guardian
'Sex change doctor guilty of misconduct'
Fri 25 May 2007
"The UK's best-known expert on transsexualism was today found guilty of serious professional misconduct for rushing five patients into sex-changing treatments, but avoided being struck off.

The General Medical Council ruled that Russell Reid, who retired last year, could only return to work under strict conditions imposed for the next 12 months that mean he can only work under strict supervision.

He must provide the GMC with a record of his treatments of any patients with gender identity disorders such as transsexualism every three months.

The disciplinary panel ruled that Dr Reid must no longer prescribe patients with sex-changing hormones at the first appointment, nor without a firm diagnosis that they are transsexual or a proper psychiatric assessment." (continues)
www.theguardian.com/society/2007/may/25/health.medicineandhealth2

Thanks signal

I may have missed it, but I'm struggling to keep up work is so annoying but do we know how the GMC picked the patients A,B & C? Were there complaints from the patients or their parents or did the complaints come from other professionals/GIC involved in their care?

Also are they only using a sample of patients where there have been specific complaints? I would think it quite likely that the problems identified with the standard of care might also apply to other patients of gender GP but presumably it's not necessary to pick apart standard of care for every patient , a small sample will do?

Presumably all the prescribers are doctors.

Tavistock GIDS don't prescribe hormone treatments as such, its recommendation. They refer to their liason clinics within paediatric endochrine services at UCLH and Leeds for this and also instruct GPs to issue scripts.

This may be a daft question but what could happen to HW if she's found to be guilty of all these charges?