The Kite Trust is preparing a response to the public consultation on the Interim Service Specification for Specialist Gender Dysphoria Services for Children and Young People, and is supporting trans, gender-diverse and gender-questioning young people and their families in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to have a voice.
In response to the consultation, The Kite Trust welcomes the possibility that children may be offered more holistic, integrated and patient centred care that seeks to respond to their healthcare needs in a more joined up and efficient approach and the positive changes of providing more support to those on waiting lists. We believe there is significant potential for the NHS to look to commission local services in the voluntary sector to provide high quality, accessible and relevant support to those on waiting lists.
However, we have strong reservations as to the availability of clinicians who have received detailed and relevant training. Any clinician working in a specialist gender dysphoria service must, first and foremost, be an expert in the care of trans, gender-diverse and gender-questioning children. As yet, there does not appear to be sufficient plans in place for workforce development to fill these roles appropriately. The Kite Trust also has reservations about the new requirement for a pre-referral consultation, as this is likely to cause additional delays and barriers to accessing treatment.
The Kite Trust firmly believes that social transition is not a medical intervention and should not, and cannot be, restricted by medical professionals. The pathologisation of transgender identity and the attempted medicalisation of social transition will only serve to ingrain lifelong distrust of healthcare providers amongst trans, gender-diverse and gender questioning children and their families. Requiring evidence of “clinically significant distress” before supporting social transition is not supported by the existing evidence documenting improved mental health and wellbeing of trans children who socially transition. It also diminishes the autonomy of children and their families to make those decisions for themselves.
We believe the interim service specification lacks clarity and conflates unregulated sources with privately accessed but regulated healthcare providers. With the length of wait times currently standing at over three years, children and their families choosing to access regulated private healthcare providers should not be treated as a safeguarding concern.
As an organisation we will be responding to the public consultation directly and are working to support our young people and their families to share their experiences with NHS commissioners. We welcome the guidance for responding to the consultation prepared by Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids and Stonewall and recommend that anyone looking for support to put together an individual or organisational response, make use of this resource available here.