Her synopsis:
"First of all, a proposed change to who can refer into the specialist gender service for children and adolescents.
In older service, most referrals came from GPs, some from CAMHS, some from charities supporting trans youth.
In the new proposal, GPs cannot refer to the specialist gender service.
GPs instead have to refer to secondary care (pediatrics or mental health), and only secondary care can make a referral to the specialist gender service.
The GPs have to deem the child sufficiently distressed to be worthy of a referral to secondary mental health services (role of pediatrics is unclear - they have not dealt with trans kids before in the UK system).
So happy trans kids can't get into the system
Everyone knows the severe pressures that child and adolescent mental health services are under in the UK.
Now all trans kids are forced through secondary care - delaying trans kids getting care & increasing delays for kids (cis or trans) in need of mental health support.
So now, to even get to the specialist gender service, a child has to persuade their parent (usually), their GP, AND a secondary health professional to do those referrals.
Sounds impossible doesn't it!
That is BEFORE whatever hurdles will be within the gender service, which is before hurdles in endocrinology.
Good job trans adolescent healthcare isn't time sensitive hey!
In the old system there was the ability of direct referrals from places like trans support charities.
This route was not commonly used, but was particularly important when trans children had a transphobic GP who refused to refer for ideological reasons.
The new system has no such plans in place for supporting trans child's right to access care.
There is no clear recourse if their GP or secondary healthcare professional is transphobic.
We KNOW that transphobic prejudice exists. This new NHS policy does not care.
The second policy out for consultation today, as was predicted from early documents, states that puberty blockers will only be prescribed under a research protocol.
I've written about this before and haven't got the spoons to say much right now
Headline problems with it include:
- It involves coercing children into research to receive healthcare. Research coercion is bad. It cannot entail informed consent. It is deeply unethical. And it will distort and make meaningless research findings.
- It means that access to puberty blockers can be outright denied based on who they define as 'eligible' under their 'research protocols'.
This is an untransparent way of denying healthcare that I expect to see in practice (whilst the NHS denies is happening in policy).
I have more to say, but not today.
The NHS (NHS England) continues to be an acute threat to trans children's rights, well-being, autonomy and happiness."