Update on NHSE and cross-sex hormones for children

[Signalbox]

Update from Hannah Barnes. Not good news.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1770913390896070658.html?utm_campaign=topunroll

NEW: NHS England has announced that new youth gender services will provide masculinising and feminising hormones to children from ‘around their 16th birthday.’ This goes further than GIDS ever did: YPs cld only access hormones at 16 if they’d been on puberty blockers for 1 year.

Just last week, it seemed that the new services would have no medical pathway, with NHSE ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers. Today’s announcement, which was not put out to consultation, appears to signal a move in the opposite direction.

NHSE says it’s considered whether ‘scientific research has shown the treatment to be of benefit to patients’ & if it represents best use of NHS resources. Three documents have informed the policy, dating from 2013, 2016 & 2018 – two apply to adults only.

But there’s no mention at all of NICE’s 2020 systematic evidence review which concluded that for use in '18 years or under' hormones were not cost effective and there was uncertainty over their safety...

“Any potential benefits of gender-affirming hormones must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria." Seven studies informing the review appear not to have been taken into account by NHSE

Children who are experiencing ‘psychotic episode[s], drug addiction or self-harming’ will be eligible for hormones, as long as the ‘associated difficulties… are not escalating’...

‘Ideally there will be support … from one or both parents (the family)/carers, or social support if the individual is a ‘Looked After Child’, and the Local Authority has been consulted.’ Non-binary individuals will be deemed eligible for hormones.

The decision over when hormones can be given will be up to different clinicians in a multi-disciplinary team – just as at GIDS - over an undefined "period of time". The duration of assessment is ‘determined by the clinical team as relative to the needs of the individual.’

While the policy does not appear to have taken into account the NICE evidence review, NHSE says it will ‘consider the recommendations of the independent Cass Review in so far as those recommendations relate to this policy document.’

One safeguarding measure does appear to be in place: "The CYP Gender Service National MDT, that includes clinicians not directly involved in the formation of the individual’s care plan" has to agree that the child is suitable for treatment.

This seems absolutely fucking insane.

Ffs!!

Just seen this.
FFS

Why would NB’s be eligible? What sort of hormones would they want for goodness sake ?

Oh, that's ridiculous!

Adding to the FFS brigade.

Surely the BBC can't ignore this?!!!!!

With parliamentary elections imminent, the Cass Review really really ought to issue another interim report.

This is madness.

This is presumably their response to puberty blockers being removed.

I suppose it ought to have been obvious what the next move would be, depressing though that is.

It is nonsensical. Perhaps the thought process is that given almost all
those on PBs go on to cross-sex hormones, why bother with the PBs? As long as they get everyone to sign forms absolving U.K. taxpayers from any compensation when their bodily experiment goes horribly wrong. Personally I don’t think taxpayers should pay for any part of medical transition and the parents/guardians of under 18s who go abroad to get it should be prosecuted. It’s just an insane gender mutilation factory. I don’t understand the logic in announcing the policy on PBs and cross-sex hormones separately. You’d think they’d roll it out at the same time.

I'm also wondering what hormone profile a non binary individual is expected to have.

In what other field of medicine would you see this paragraph:

"Children who are experiencing ‘psychotic episode[s], drug addiction or self-harming’ will be eligible for hormones, as long as the ‘associated difficulties… are not escalating’"

Absolute madness.

Yet another FFS!!

"Looked after children", ie children in care, presumably the consent would be given by social worker?

How on earth can anyone (let alone a child) undergoing a psychotic episode consent to these drugs? These people are insane.

We need to find out who is responsible for this and what their affiliations are.

This has been the logical direction of travel for some time.

It was apparent from the dispersal of the 'unrepentant for their approach and actions' GIDS clinicians to relevant centres. There was plenty of time to put GIDS or affirmation model sympathisers and people with lived experience of a certain perspective in place.

The York study is no longer a deliverable within the lifetime of the Cass Review although NHSE will take it on (still done by York).

https://cass.independent-review.uk/cass-review-quantitive-research/

I anticipated this after learning about the upcoming Simonoff GnRHa study because it meant that NHSE were confident about this passing an ethics review.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/gender-dysphoria-clinical-programme/implementing-advice-from-the-cass-review/cyp-gender-dysphoria-research-oversight-board/

It seems that, no matter what is released, no matter what the outcome of evidence reviews, the juggernaut will continue.

These ghouls won’t rest until they’ve ruined a generation of children.

JFC

It really is a case of follow the money, isn't it? There is no other reason for such an appalling decision

Three documents have informed the policy, dating from 2013, 2016 & 2018 – two apply to adults only.

What the actual fuck. I’m so angry that they can do this to children using these outdated and unrelated “documents”.

Very much agree with this. I hope the media are on to this.

I have to say that looking through pubmed the other day I was absolutely stunned by thousands of medical articles on transgender health with AFAB and cis gender this and Gender Affirming Hormones that. It struck me how widely this is accepted with a wholesale loss of sanity in the healthcare field bar the occasional voice of sanity. It’s as if a focus on what’s medically possible has driven all critical thought out of what we might have otherwise thought intelligent people.

Yes. This.

Non-binary individuals will be deemed eligible for hormones.
😳

Children who are experiencing ‘psychotic episode[s], drug addiction or self-harming’ will be eligible for hormones, as long as the ‘associated difficulties… are not escalating’...
From that statement I assume they think gender dysmorphia(?) is causing the above, rather than the above causing the gender questioning? How much therapy/exploration will those children have first to discover the chicken/egg question here.

No longer safe to have children