Mysterious drop in GIDS Waiting List…

There were minutes from meetings online that showed the T&P trust chief exec bragging re: how much publicity GIDS was getting, how referrals were going up and how NHS England were giving them so much money they couldn’t spend it (IIRC lots of it went on building renovations and the budget ring fenced for clinician pay was never spent because they couldn’t recruit).

So I have no doubt that they wouldn’t prioritise pruning out any duplicates on the waiting list.

The newspapers seems to be suggesting the waiting list was never as long as the Tavi was suggesting in the first place. Is it normal to have duplicate names on a NHS waiting list??

It's years since i worked with waiting lists, but i can see how duplicates could have occured, even if they really shouldnt happen.

The referrals werent just coming from GPs, mermaids were referring at one point. So its possible that children could have been referred by different sources under different names. Also without an NHS number and and acurate date of birth, it might have been difficult to spot duplicates. Same if they had two addresses or change of address.

The clinic was used to a certain number of referrals for a long time, and may have become overwhelmed by the sudden increase in referrals and never caught up with keeping on top of it all. They may not have ever thought to make sure children still want to be seen, or have moved over to adult waiting list?

GIDS famously never bothered with data so it could be anything from bad publicity to their support dog eating their homework.

We will never know and more importantly, neither will they.

This time last year, my DS was on a two year waiting list for an ASD diagnosis.

The diagnosis and paperwork went to CAMHS then to re branded CAMHS under a different name then to a private provider (who was using a building which still had CAMHs signage). During one of my regular chasing calls, I asked how the waiting list was managed "on a spreadsheet" was the breezy reply.

The point is NHS systems are the opposite of sleek. They are often crap.I think it is a good guess that the Tavi just didn't know, but it was in their interests to make it seem as high as possible.

There are probably other factors too..

It was a fad, a form of rebellion, a social contagion like others we've seen in earlier generations, and it was bound to run its course eventually. Also, in recent years, parents have had decent support and the kind of resources they needed to push back, so that's helped. I have teens - they roll their eyes at the trans/non-binary nonsense.

It's not unusual for several reasons, similar to MH. In some regions, you can be placed on waiting lists by several referrers, each of which is counted as an individual referral.

That children and teenagers grow out of these things.

Could it be that all the talk of a trend and social contagion could be true? And that the trend is starting to come to an end with the other kids eye rolling.

Who'd thunk?

And that parents are asking more questions about the safety of it too.

Or to put it another way, vulnerable young people have been defrauded and experimented upon by unscrupulous healthcare snake oil salesmen who deliberately withheld the true, dreadful cost of these 'treatments' in order to induce demand.

Or by practitioners simply carried away by their own cleverness and 'progress' -- the thinking seems to have been that if it could be done, it should be done. IIRC, there was a reaction of 'Oh wow, we've got to start doing that!' among UK gender clinics after the initial results of the Dutch puberty blockers.

Yes, just a little anecdote but it cheered me up so much to hear that 😀

@Toseland brilliant! My 17 year daughter is the same ! She is very much a Terf and has a couple of common garden lesbian pals( not trans men- just happy wee lesbians, it's fantastic to see! In all their DM glory!🤣) . Please let this horrible ideology be on the decline.

It's an area that has always needed far better research and data collection. I wonder how many have gone to private care vs desisted

Firmly agree with PP that as the age groups have matured this is now seen as something a bit tragic rather than fashionable. What becomes fashionable becomes unfashionable and rejected. I've been fearing the backlash since 2018: Stonewall let down their constituents when they went for the rainbow glitter rather than the pedestrian grey acceptance originally aimed for by their founders.

What's your evidence for thinking that?

As a GP, I'd say exactly the opposite is true. The adverse publicity around the Tavi, Gender GP, Keira Bell etc etc has made GPs more wary of prescribing (and rightly so).

There is a concept in economics, and indeed in healthcare economics, called Supplier Induced Demand. In healthcare economics the idea is that the supplier artificially stimulates demand from patients (ie beyond what the Pareto Effect would normally arrive at) by exploiting an information gap - the healthcare supplier has superior information and therefore induces the patient to demand treatment that is excessively invasive and/or beyond what the patient would normally request had the patient had access to all the relevant information about the treatment.

If we look at the falsely optimistic and sunny promises that were being made by healthcare providers at the start of the trans trend (puberty blockers are reversible, invasive and extreme surgeries and simple and can be easily recovered from, it is possible to 'pass' through taking cross sex hormones with no deleterious side effects), I would suggest that we see a clear example of Supplier Induced Demand in motion.

Or to put it another way, vulnerable young people have been defrauded and experimented upon by unscrupulous healthcare snake oil salesmen who deliberately withheld the true, dreadful cost of these 'treatments' in order to induce demand.

The newspapers seems to be suggesting the waiting list was never as long as the Tavi was suggesting in the first place. Is it normal to have duplicate names on a NHS waiting list??

I checked in with my young teenage son if 'gender' had been raised at school recently - he breezily said "Oh that - no, none of us believe in it Mum, don't worry!"

Do you mean at the outset rather than this point where they've de-duplicated etc?

Who knows. It certainly looks like there's a need for more assurance and reassurance about the quality of the data.

However, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that GIDS' data isn't reliable, given their other poor record-keeping.

It could be that the orginal figure of 7,000 was never reviewed? Maybe they never checked for duplicates, or asked if they wanted to stay on the list previously. But as part of the move to new clinics, did.

Children and parents might have wanted the referral for access to PB, and because its clear that isnt a guarantee any more, went somewhere else? Also, if the waiting is known to be long, people would find private clinics just to be seen.

It's Patrick Strudwick and YMMV as to whether he's an informed narrator.

https://inews.co.uk/news/nhs-gender-clinic-young-people-understaffed-not-ready-2982002?

I hope not! GenderGP seems to be imploding of late so I don’t think it’ll be an option for much longer.

No doubt some other dubious outfit will rise from it’s ashes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderGP/

I hope it doesn't mean they've all headed straight for the Wild West of GenderGP and the like, with even fewer safeguards.

I expect Keira Bell’s evidence to court and Susie Green’s spectacular, high profile fall from grace (from regular Lorraine/This Morning appearances to being shoved out of the child sex change charity she ran) have also had an effect on the referral numbers.

Glad to hear CAMHS now feel more able to support children with comorbid gender distress rather than than refer straight on (presume the old NHS England pathway expected referral?)

The waiting lists for CAMHS continues to grow and the number of young people struggling with their mental health has never been higher.

I think the significant rise in young people claiming to have trans identities has led to professionals not feeling the need to make referrals to GIDS, except in cases where there is significant dysphoria. They feel more able to deal with lower level issues themselves.