May 2018 Guardian article:
Schools are supporting increasing numbers of transgender students, using a variety of guidance from the teaching unions and charities such as Mermaids (which has a grant of £35,000 from the Department for Education to deliver training to 35 schools).
This rise is reflected in referrals to the children’s Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which increased by 1,978% – from 97 in 2009 to 2,016 in 2016-17. Of those children, 70% are biologically female.
Bernadette Wren, a clinical psychologist at Gids, says many young people seen by the service have been bullied or self-harm, and a number are on the autistic spectrum." (continues)
Adele Robinson (not her real name), a head of year at a secondary school, shares Davies-Arai’s worries. The school has had 12 children, all girls, come out as transgender in the past 18 months. The majority, she says, have autism, and some have experienced sexual abuse.
When they come out, she says, they have brought in information sourced from Tumblr blogs and YouTube videos. Although her team does its best to “support every child in a loving, kind and compassionate way”, she feels that staff are too frightened to challenge what she sees as harmful practices: “We have chest binders worn in school, which is horrible. If a child was cutting, they would be straight in with a counsellor. Yet damaging developing breast tissue goes unquestioned. It’s a gross failure in terms of child protection.”
www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/15/transgender-row-teachers-afraid-challenge-breast-binding
May 2018 James Kirkup Spectator article includes link to Dr Polly Carmichael's lecture (lead NHS GIDS):
In 2009/10, the GIDS had 97 children referred, of whom 40 were listed as “assigned female at birth.” In 2016/17, the GIDS had 2016 children referred, of whom 1400 were assigned female at birth. The total caseload for the service rose 2,078 per cent in seven years. The number of assigned females being referred rose 3,500 per cent in seven years. Why have the numbers risen in this way? Is there a clear and undisputed explanation, which would render Lord Tebbit’s suggested research into causation redundant?
This is an issue addressed by Dr Polly Carmichael, who runs the GIDS, in a recent talk to the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. In her thoughtful hour-long lecture, she said this:
“The rapid rise in the number of assigned females…. exemplifies the importance of keeping discourse open and allowing different voices to be heard.
“You might say the increase in the numbers of assigned females coming forward is [because] that it’s easier for females to talk about their gender-diverse feelings so what we are seeing is an increase in awareness getting towards a better representation of the true prevalence of this among females.
“A converse explanation, a question: are there issues for young women around how they perceive their gender? There has been a worry by some that people who would previously have had an outcome around sexuality are now having an outcome around gender.”
(In other words, these are girls who do not readily identify with the predominant idea of femininity and are sexually attracted to biological females, and who would, a decade or two ago, have grown up to consider themselves lesbians.) Dr Carmichael’s conclusion:
“The truth is we don’t know, but we need discussion in order to be thinking about what this could mean.”
Just in case that’s not clear, let me sum it up: the country’s leading centre for the care of gender-variant children says its caseload has risen more than twentyfold (35 times for girls) in less than a decade. The head of that centre doesn’t know why that’s happened and says the question needs further discussion." (continues)
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/why-are-some-mps-trying-to-shut-down-the-transgender-debate/