According to a counselor who has established a private female company, transgender kids are being left in a “far worse place ” than before the Cass record.
Based on the findings of the Cass review, Dr. Aiden Kelly, a clinical psychologist with a focus on gender and a member of the Tavistock and Portman NHS mental health trust’s gender identity development services ( Gids ), expressed his concern about the ability of the NHS to provide a suitable gender service.
The report, which was made public on Wednesday, went into more detail about past recommendations to split the now-closed Gids office into regional centers. Waiting names have grown longer and some babies have been moved to child services in an effort to meet demand since the shutdown of Gids and the opening of the new facilities.
“We’re in a much worse position than we were four years ago, ” he said. “The Cass assessment and NHS England’s policy changes, and the kind of actions and decisions they’ve made in terms of what to do with solutions, how to set up services – or not, as the case may be – means we’re in a much worse position. ”
The Cass record criticized personal delivery, noting that some parents felt forced to go that way due to years-long waiting names for their children at Gids. The leading specialist paediatrician Hilary Cass, the author of the report, said in an appointment with Radio 4’s Today program on Wednesday that:” Everyone should be receiving the same standard of care. And I do worry about private healthcare, which does n’t offer the kind of assessment I’m suggesting in the NHS. ”
There are currently 5,000 children on the waiting list for the regional services, which were supposed to start in the spring but were postponed because of what the document called the “complexity ” of starting hospitals from scratch.
She continued,” I completely understand why parents have thought that going down that path is the best way to provide their kids. We have asked NHS England to give people advice on what it means if they choose to pursue a secret path in order to return to the NHS afterwards. ”
The report advised parents to steer clear of illegal methods, such as purchasing hormones from the internet, and to check with private clinics that are dispensencing hormones in the name of their children.
In 2019, only 16 % of those referred to Gids started hormone treatment, said Kelly, whose office does not prescribe puberty blockers, “so it does n’t fit with the narrative that people were rushed on to solutions, that everyone just got it handed out like candy, how you hear some people talk about it.
It was exactly the opposite of that. ”
Kelly, who now runs an independent gender service, Gender Plus, with some former colleagues, said there was an “unjustifiable ” level of caution from the Cass report that did not match his experience in the service and that poor outcomes had been overemphasised, leaving England “out of step” with the rest of the world.
He continued,” It is important to remember that those conducting this expert evaluation have not worked in gender. People who are actually knowledgeable about the subject matter and have been doing it for a while do n’t exhibit that level of apprehension and fear. ”
Kelly, who has specialised in sex for nine years and previously worked in mental heath, added: “Yes, more research is needed. But not by sacrificing the quality of the maintenance that is actually provided. ”
He claimed that the majority of young transgender persons who had been getting the assistance were now “paying the biggest price.”
In the years between the start of the Cass assessment in 2020 and then, the support on offer to young trans people had diminished significantly, Kelly said, which was “disappointing”.
It does n’t seem to me like the decision to get rid of [ Gids ] and start fresh with two services with no history, no expertise in the field, and instead of working with clinical teams who have never worked in gender before, who would see a much larger and much longer list of referrals, sounds like a successful move. ”
He added: “You’re going to have people who’ve been waiting over four years to see a gender specialist; they will be arriving at one of these new gender clinics, and they may well be aware of the field more than the doctor, which is not an exaggeration. That, to me, is incredibly worrying. ”