Tavistock scandal ‘on a par with East German doping of athletes’ - top of Times home page tonight

[Fenlandia]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e04f4958-aa26-11ed-8a03-b2faadede0c5?shareToken=81bddfc85342137edc81797069ccd8cb

Thanks so much for the links, I'm passing them on.

I've pre ordered the book. The times and Financial Times have added it to their best books lists for 2023 and it's already marked as a best seller on Amazon. (In sociology and anthropology interestingly)

Health service funding is complicated. A Trust will be given a general budget calculated on various factors including size of the population it treats and rough indicators of how much treatment the average patient is expected to need (so a Trust in an area with a lot of older people, or high levels of deprivation would expect to deal with more health problems than one with thr same number of people in its catchment area but who are majnly young and wealthy). And then there are per-procedure payments for activities the NHS wants to promote - for example there may be a payment for each person they see for a turning-50 health check, or for everyone over 70 who gets a pneumonia vaccination (this isn’t directly related to the cost of the procedure; it should cover that but there is also an 'incentive component). And there may also be extra payments for running a specific service that improves population health, such as a stop smoking clinic.

So having more patients does usually mean more money, but it's not really 'you have X to spend on each person with dysphoria'.

I'd be surprised if the money it "brought in" wasn't simply rubber dollars.

Identifying as trans should be regarded and treated as a red flag

The story we read over and over is how poor CAMHS is, how woefully underfunded and understaffed. Why is there no campaign for better support for troubled youngsters? The Tavistock scandal may well be huge, but so is the deplorable service (not) provided by CAMHS.

The government have a big part to play in this unfolding horror in my view given the cuts cuts cuts to essential services. What could be more important than supporting the next generation to become secure, confident, productive and happy citizens?

So underfunded it justified what's happened? I can't agree. Especially from a cost perspective. It's cost more!

That's the very old and tatty sticking plaster over the even bigger issue that we could triple CAMHS tomorrow and it would still be overwhelmed. And that the real question is wtf are we doing to all children and young people that so many are having mental health needs of such intensity and frequency?

If you look through the yearly T&P board meeting minutes you can see some of the NHSE budget was spent on improving the buildings and IT systems. Most financial years GIDS ended on a surplus because they just couldn’t recruit enough staff to spend all the money.

Paul Jenkins seems to have been using the internationally recognised status of GIDS to promote the overall T&P brand and attract foreign students (and thus foreign student fees) to the T&Ps post graduate school.
Doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that all the press rounds, documentaries and international conferences might drive up the numbers of gender distressed kids, and if it did, he saw the rising referral rates as a bargaining tool for more NHSE funding, with seemingly nary a thought about what happens when the demand far outstrips the supply year on year.

He shouldn’t be allowed to just slide into early retirement and fade away.

I think a lot of problems are caused by social media and unfettered access to the internet.

I guess I'm naive in thinking early rounded intervention by trained mental health professionals might reduce the number of referrals to gender 'specialists' but I am clearly wrong.

Our poor children.

Children referred to Gids were ten times more likely than the national average to have a registered sex offender as a parent
To be fair, there could be an effect of small numbers there (with one or two children out of the 1000 making a big difference). I don't have a feel for the proportion of parents who are sex offenders in the average population - does anyone know?

Ignore that link - it’s one I opened from another thread. Will get that post deleted to avoid confusion!

Trying again:

www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/health/21378985.interview-tavistock-portmans-new-head-paul-jenkins-challenges-faces/

This is Jenkins’ puff piece/introduction from when he took up the T&P job in 2013.

He was the first non clinician to hold the role and went in from day one with the aim of expansion.

Which is fine for a company or a charity but perhaps a bit weird for a specialist mental health service…

This is perhaps also complicated by the fact that the P part of the T&P is a specialist service for adult and juvenile sex offenders so it might just be that a family that is already in contact with the Portman are more likely to hear about GIDS and be referred to/prioritised for an appointment with GIDS.

tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/care-and-treatment/our-clinical-services/portman-clinic/

I agree. But...no one says this about autism (small numbers). I think we have to steel ourselves. It's such a mix especially when you consider the parents who know the dangers in schools yet are considered the risk(!)

It's also curious that they knew this level of detail about non-patients and yet the follow up was so bad!

The lack of follow up was clearly deliberate.

I just wonder how they got away with that.

Don't the nhs have guidelines and best practice around things like this?

OK, answering my own question, handwavingly: there are about 60 thousand on the SO register; there are about 10 million children in the UK; so it's about 6 in 1000 for the average child, and presumably about 60 out of 1000-ish cases for the Tavistock children. Christ.

Not a small numbers effect then. Probably a trauma effect, I'd guess.

Somewhat superfluously given the OP's link, I've scanned the original copy from The Sunday Times magazine, so here it is if anyone wants a printout.

Next 2 pages of the article.

2 more pages of the article.

Further 2 pages!

Final 2 pages! That is all.

And here is the Janice Turner opinion piece in a recent edition of the Times. Note Social Services get a kicking from Turner in one incredible story - so I'm flagging this up for @NeverYouMindMyName who comments on SS on another thread. I should also note that when I named the awful social worker on that thread, the name has now been redacted! That's power for you - a power that eludes MPs for instance, who can be trashed on forums galore.