... this week legal proceedings will be launched which, if successful, could hamper Gender Plus’s business model and stop others hoping to gain approval for prescribing hormones to teenagers
... Paul Conrathe ... described the CQC’s decision to grant Gender Plus’s licence as a “leap in the dark”. “As regulator, the CQC is responsible for ensuring the public and especially the vulnerable and children receive safe and effective medical treatment,” he told the New Statesman. “Concerns for this treatment are particularly serious given the irreversible lifelong consequences and that it is given to a vulnerable group of teenagers.”
In an unexpected development on Thursday 21 March, NHS England <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/o/zdaKQ/www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/clinical-commissioning-policy-prescribing-of-gender-affirming-hormones.pdf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">quietly announced that new youth gender services will provide masculinising and feminising hormones to children from “around their 16th birthday”. This is a departure from Gids policy, which stipulated that young people could only access hormones at 16 if they had been on puberty blockers for a year. It appears to be at odds with the cautious stance towards medical interventions – evidenced by its decision to no longer prescribe puberty blockers – which underpins the model of care* *these new hubs are planning to follow.
Somewhat surprisingly, NHS England’s announcement makes no mention of Nice’s 2020 systematic evidence review, instead citing three documents which informed the new policy. One of the three is more than a decade old, and two relate to the treatment of adults only.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2024/03/legal-challenge-stop-private-gender-clinics-teenagers-tavistock
I think this case starting tomorrow has been discussed on other threads, including gardening advice.
But thought this article by Hannah Barnes was worth highlighting, in in view of the fact that it has been left to 2 mothers to challenge what is apparently still being allowed to happen.
Can be read in full at https://archive.ph/zdaKQ