Nottingham is very popular with young people transitioning because it has a shorter wait time of about 2 years (achieved at least in part by funnelling existing patients through the pathway more rapidly than other GICs). This means a child referred to GIDs at 14/15 who ages out of paediatrics without being seen and is transferred to adult services at 17.5-18 will go straight to the top of Nottingham’s list.
Nottingham is supervising two ‘pilot’ services (Indigo in Manchester and East of England, which IIRC is Norwich and surrounds). These are also very popular, especially with younger people (university populations). I haven’t looked at EoE much but Indigo is mostly staffed by transgender people and chaired by Stephen Whittle (Press for Change founder, self described architect of the GRA, first ever non clinical chair of WPATH recently retired from
MMU). The staff are called ‘Care Pathway Navigators’ and doctors just seem to sign off whatever the Care Navigators suggest. Anyone complex is supposed to go to Nottingham to see the proper GIC, but who is deciding who is complex?
Basically Notts is the victim of its own success, it has lots of activists working in the three associated services and the top staff are at the cutting edge of new fangled gender. Like all GICs they are unable to recruit enough qualified staff to meet demand (and they are under more demand than other GICs). Activist staff pressure clinical and clerical staff (which makes normie staff leave) and the whole house of cards seems to be teetering.
On trans forums Notts have gone from being lauded as the best GIC to having loads of complaints re: late appointments and missed paperwork, and trans patients love to complain to PALS so at a time when WPATH is being dragged in international media, the one UK clinic stuffed with WPATH believers is getting loads of complaints. They are also getting the patient group that Cass is trying to investigate (GIDs transfers).
Must be a terrible place to work at the moment 🙊