New NHS children’s gender clinic hit by disagreements and resignations - Guardian

[DisappearingGirl]

Guardian article

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/18/new-nhs-childrens-gender-clinic-hit-by-disagreements-and-resignations

"A string of resignations from a team preparing for the launch of the new NHS children’s gender clinic has further complicated plans to open the services in April."

"Disagreements over the text of a training module for medical recruits to the new gender service have prompted NHS England to remove the training materials project from a team at Great Ormond Street hospital and outsource it to the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges."

"Great Ormond Street is working with the Evelina children’s hospital and the South London and Maudsley NHS trust to pilot the first of several regional hubs that will take on the work previously conducted by the Tavistock clinic."

"Some clinicians working on the new training materials are understood to have felt it important to affirm a patient’s gender identity and believed patients could benefit from medication. Others, some of whom resigned their posts, stressed the need to adhere to Cass’s recommendations and take a holistic, “exploratory” approach."

Can’t make out whether it the pro-affirming or the pro-exploration clinicians who have resigned?

It is a mess. On one hand the executive team are aiming to get the training right this time. And on the other hand the waiting list is huge and children are at risk of going private where they will not receive exploratory care and therefore receive a low standard of care.

The training modules has to be developed as there must be none available to use and modify. However how is this going to work with people on the team who will only ever approve affirming only care? Meaning anything that might be exploratory might be rejected. There seems to be an issue in implementing Dr Cass’s recommendations.

It is a similar situation to the one being unpacked in court in Edinburgh at the moment. A passionate genderologist sees anything but their view as heretic and sinful, and the purpose of their job is to enforce their belief system over and above anything else. Which includes the service users.

Neutrality is sin. Anything but slavish service of the belief system is sin. Non compliant policy is sin. To consider people's actual needs and rights is sin. To provide services to sinners is a sin. To tolerate colleagues not of the one true faith without trying to get rid of them is a sin.

Which unfortunately makes it increasingly obvious that someone committed to this belief system is rendering themselves unsuitable for a post in a public service where neutrality, impartiality, and serving the public (all of them) is the job requirement. And to run places like this is going to require making political neutrality a key part of the job description. Because more and more places are just descending into a group of this particular lobby creating havoc, and preventing anyone from doing anything useful, while stacking up employment tribunals.

It sounds basically like one group wanted to ignore CASS and the other wanted to acknowledge it's findings. When the former wouldn't budge the latter quit - which is pretty much the pattern at the Tavistock with the responsible clinicians whistleblowing.

Also fascinating to see this position on a day when WHO will not be making any recommendations for trans identifying children & adolescents due to lack of evidence...

Which begs the question about why the hell the former group think social transition of children is good and just how ideologically driven they are.

There IS no evidence for transition of children and the lack of follow up from the Tavistock is definitely part of this lack of evidence.

Though I know such disputes based on strongly help positions occur in every field, this example extreme belief-led factionalisation is more characteristic (on one side at least) of religion than science.

Why is there no leadership on this? Is anyone in control in the NHS?

Yes, I've no idea how you develop training or a treatment plan when you have:

• two factions with entirely different and strongly held views on how best to manage it
• different views on what trans actually is and whether it is fixed or changeable
• almost no good quality research evidence

Why do the clinicians who believe in gender with such religious zeal think the Tavistock closed?

It's really disappointing that it sounds like the ones who would have protected the children from over-zealous idiots were the ones who have resigned.

If we must have a gender service (and I'd rather we didn't do anything gender related on the NHS at all, I have a feeling an awful lot of them would get better very fast if there wasn't anything available to pander to this social contagion), it should be one that's fit for purpose, that's exploratory as a first resort and only looks at interventions further down the line after multiple appointments and full patient history, screening for other conditions etc, has been done by a continuous clinician who knows the child and their life. They should follow the well-established principle of "titration" as used by pharmacists for all other medications/interventions - the lowest possible effective intervention.

Maybe the best approach would be to put two opposing clinicians together on each case to make shared decision-making so they have to listen to each other and children get protected by design rather than luck of the draw.

Meanwhile here's the first private gender hormone clinic for over 16s to be approved by the
Care Quality Commission
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9eze1n9dvo.amp

@Chersfrozenface Do we know if it's being run by the decent ex-employees of GIDS, with an exploratory focus, or the zealots? It does say they have to have a minimum of 6 appointments for assessment before any treatment, so that's good. With the way the NHS works, I'd imagine they'll be offloading referrals onto this place pretty quickly under "right to choose".

At least it doesn't sound like young people will be getting a prescription after an initial assessment of 40 mins with a clinician who knows nothing about the patient, unlike what I heard other services doing. And at least the minimum age is 16 which is a lot less awful than 11.

It is headed by Aiden Kelly, formerly of the Tavistock

There is a MN thread on him from August this year here
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4888958-interview-with-dr-aidan-kelly-genderplus-on-times-radio-wendnesday-735

I don't doubt others will be able to providf further insight

This is an area of child medicine that until now has been dominated by trans extremist pressure groups determined to transition mentally unwell children, no matter what. The lack of evidence, data and the experimental nature of medication is steadily being exposed (hence the WHO decision mentioned above).
The lobby groups are (painfully slowly and with limited success) being prised away from this. The NHS (like all our institutions) are completely compromised having been cheer leaders for an ideology to the detriment of children.
Now the catastrophic nature of the experimental medication, surgery and extreme mental health challenges it nurtures is exposed, they're trying to reverse ferret by saying as little as possible. They're all professionally compromised by their enabling.

This is just proving that the Tavistock scandal needed individuals to be held accountable and struck off for dire practice.

Unherd article on Gender Plus

https://unherd.com/thepost/private-youth-gender-clinic-could-be-worse-than-the-tavistock/

And a New Statesman article by Hannah Barnes

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2024/01/inside-nhs-englands-faltering-plan-to-replace-tavistock

No it’s not. It’s very much the affirmation gang from the Tavi. The cynic in me might point out that more money is to be made from prescribing lifelong medication and referring to private surgeons than there is from watchful waiting.

Privatisation of NHS child abusers and homophobes.

Crackin'

And the parents are positively all for it and paying for the privilege.

I don't think any of this stuff will be sorted until the medical community accepts overall that the whole thing is a medical fraud. In the same way they came to realize lobotomies were never legitimate treatment.

But as for the affirmation only types - I don't believe they are thinking mainly in terms of health or science. They see it in terms of a human rights formulation, and transitioning is seen as a right, so medical questions are set aside.

Glinner has posted footage of Aidan Kelly giving a very revealing talk in which he lays out the experimental nature of so called "medical care" at GIDs for these vulnerable children. He openly admits that children's healthy bodies are being harmed, that they're turned into life long medical patients, their fertility is compromised, they're too young to comprehend issues around deliberately becoming infertile and a whole lot more. He blows apart the notion of ethical medicine, "first do no harm".

He's speaking at a Tigala conference - the Independent Guardian ad Litems Agency. Children in care having been relentlessly targeted by transactivists for many years.

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-banality-of-aidan?utm_campaign=email-post&r=ahi4t&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

we need to stop using this frigging 'gender' word, and revert to sex.

Then we have ' The new NHS children's sex clinic'

And it becomes really clear how fucking absurd this is.

Thread from 2020 about this talk (the talk was in 2018).
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3950421-Talk-by-Dr-Aidan-Kelly-Tavistock

Yes, or

'The new NHS children's sex change clinic'

'The new NHS children's sex change clinic for transsexual children'

Yeah. I think public support would fall dramatically.