NHS funding £3mil to site promoting trans to children

[IcakethereforeIam]

This is absolutely appalling

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/21/pro-trans-website-for-children-backed-by-nhs-investigated/

https://archive.ph/pkHm9 this'll see you over the paywall

In many ways, not at all surprising.

Merely indicative of how captured all our major organisations are and how difficult it will be to unpick all of them.

I’m so tired of this world we live in. I’m all for people being who they want to be, but when funds are being put in when it could be used in other areas of the already crumbling society - this really shouldn’t be a priority. NHS are failing yet using funds on things that are a minority of people rather than things affecting many people on a day to day basis.

Just proving the NHS do have enough funding/budget if they can afford to waste money.

I’m beginning to understand how the frustration of a populace that’s being ignored and gaslit by its very comfortably off politicians, bureaucrats, and institutions turns to thoughts of revolution.

Or, along comes a populist who promises to fix it and voilá…we get dictatorship.

👏

Uh huh... "Underfunded" our NHS is.... Sure....

My old workplace subscribed to Kooth for a while. They were expanding (so I was told by their rep) from their core offerings aimed at YAs, into providing online mental healthcare services for employers to offer their employees.

My impression was that that side of their business was about providing a checkbox service, so corporates could ‘demonstrate’ that they ‘cared’ about employee mental health. In my opinion, the resources weren’t worth the price.

The footer on one of their emails to schools. (Click to read the whole thing)

“Our youth and adolescent service is available to over 62% of all children and young people in the UK.”

2.5 million pounds profit

Think of how many not for profit clubs to get kids off the Internet and doing positive things that would fund

Or proper support in person for anorexia

Or nurses in schools - the old fashioned kind kids could go and talk to, in person

All gone into the pockets of fat cats to fund the lavish lifestyles of the 1% and kids get a useless at best and dangerous at worst website.

Really should be criminal.

Well that’s infuriating.

BACP need a court case.

Kooth was one of the links pushed at us when DD(14) was self harming and in extreme distress last year. No help from CAHMS of course because they are so swamped. They saw her once after an A&E visit, said 'have you considered neurodiversity?' and then discharged us.

I looked into Kooth and was extremely concerned with what I found, no way was it a good place for a vulnerable possibly autistic teenage girl. Fortunately, we have some money, so were able to access some private art therapy for her, which has made a massive difference. I chose her counsellor very carefully.

Why is the NHS funding stuff that isn’t the NHS?

It reminds me of the early days of austerity, the Tory craze for 'commissioning'. If anyone remembers the EasyCouncil, was it Barnet? Which I imagine is still being implimented/unpicked. Nothing was to be done in house. The Government, government departments and Local Authorities were supposed to contract out everything. Arms length everything. Privatise everything.

There were just to be a few people employed, in practice I imagine less than the absolute minimum, to monitor the contracts. I want to blame Call me Dave and Eric Pickles, but there's plenty to go round.

I haven't the faintest idea if this does have its roots in that, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Services sold to the cheapest bidder. And who, at that time, would think to guard against something like this? Ripe for all sorts of corruption.

Hello

I want to say something really important about Kooth. It is not just serving the minority of young people who focus their distress around their gender - it actually reaches young people with a huge range of issues and presentations. It offers a space where young people can go to talk anonymously about things that worry them and actually the team behind the scenes ( not bots or AI impersonators but real people) do a lot of excellent work in helping young people de escalate their concerns and worries. It is an early help service. I use the word service because that it what it is. People complain about why the NHS fund it … the truth is innovation ( and Kooth was highly innovative - set up when barely a handful of local authorities even had websites!) often comes from entrepreneurs willing to take a risk and do something different. The service is scrutinised and held accountable and rightly so. It has also saved the lives of thousands of teenagers who might not be here if it wasn’t for Kooth. So please- do not throw the baby out with the bath water.
authirirsx

Or rather, suggesting the NHS wouldn’t be in the financial mess it is if it didn’t waste the money it has. I suspect the cost of this whole debacle is enormous.

So please- do not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Unfortunately the bathwater is so toxic that it's taking a lot of babies with it.

Kooth is not alone in this. Many organisations for women and young people and vulnerable people which do a lot of excellent work are now doing harm as well. And since they have committed themselves so deeply to the harm, there's no easy way to stop the harm without also damaging the good work they do.

So a publically funded socialised health service, which claims it is dangerously stretched, and which currently has a year long waiting list for life-saving cardiac surgery, has nevertheless spent £3 million setting children down a pathway which will lead to iatrogenic chronic illnesses and potentially amputation of healthy body parts, leading to more pressure on said socialsed healthcare service.

Make it make sense.

I think they threw the baby under the bus themselves.

A service which provides early help to the most vulnerable children and young people should be the most extremely cautious in what it promotes to them. Kooth has in effect been promoting transition to many of the most vulnerable children in the country. That makes it dangerous.

And when innovation is doing something dangerous it is supposed to stop the dangerous practice and act more safely. If it doesn't then it gets penalised or shut down. This is scrutiny and accountability.

As for saving the lives of "thousands" of teenagers who would not be here without it - the Papyrus Suicide Trust (which I have no reason to disbelieve) says that there are 200 teenage suicides per year in the UK. Are you claiming that over a five year period Kooth has really prevented at least half the suicidal teenagers in the UK from going on to kill themselves? What's your evidence for that? Or what exactly are you saying?

Thank you. I think what you said was worth saying. But it's not this board that are throwing anything out, babies or bathwater. We're reacting to a newspaper article written because public money from the cash strapped NHS is being used by this organisation to promote harm.

I'm sure Kooth does good work and I hope they continue to do that. Promoting gender ideology to distressed children, the actually most marginalised and vulnerable, though is not good work.

cahms is the NHS branch for mental heath, the ‘help’ for children who are suicidal from cahms just isnt there due to lack of funding

That is simply not true. They have not 'taken a lot of babies' with them. They talk to young people seven days a week, 365 days a year and do stellar work around risk, self-harm, suicidal ideation as well as less extreme presentations.

I agree that promoting gender idealogy is not healthy or helpful and I hope they will learn from that.