Reversal on NHS ‘trans’ survey for children:
A QUESTION asking children whether they feel comfortable in their gender will be removed by the NHS from primary school questionnaires after it was criticised by parents and MPS.
Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust said the question, which was on a survey filled out by children aged 10 and 11, would no longer be widely asked.
Children were asked whether they felt “the same inside” as the gender they were born with, as part of the trust’s school health needs assessment, The Daily Telegraph revealed yesterday.
A spokesman for the trust said: “We recognise the need for sensitivity and an appropriate approach. As such, we will be adapting a more targeted approach to this in the future, rather than asking this question of all children.”
The trust added that the question was introduced “following input from sexual health specialists, the charity Lancashire LGBT and primary schools, who confirmed they were seeing an increase in requests for advice and support relating to school-age children”.
“We have also been working with Lancashire County Council on the development and roll-out of a digital platform to replace paper questionnaires. This is being piloted in a small number of schools, and does not include the question about gender. All of the questions will be reviewed as part of this development,” the spokesman added.
The council said: “We agree that more consultation is needed before deciding whether to include questions about gender and other sensitive health issues in this assessment.”
Tim Loughton, Conservative MP and a former children’s minister, claimed the question was “deeply worrying”.
SIR – I spent decades representing patients detained for treatment in psychiatric hospitals. On reading your report (December 11) about Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust seeking information from children about their gender, it was hard to contain my anger.
It was anger on behalf of the patients who, due to the closure of local units, are moved miles away from home with consequent damage to their family life, which is so important to recovery. It was anger for staff whom I saw struggling with excessive workloads in highly volatile environments and for ward managers spending hours ringing round to see who might be persuaded to come off leave to fill gaps in the rota.
It was for patients due an independent review by a tribunal that was often hampered by the absence of any member of staff who knew them at all, let alone well enough to assist in deciding whether their liberty should be returned to them.
We know that the financial pressures on the NHS are immense, but while we have managers with so much time on their hands that they can dream up fatuous gender surveys of schoolchildren instead of addressing real problems which need urgent attention, we are lost. John O’donnell
Preston, Lancashire
SIR – To ask 10-year-olds whether they “feel” male or female is pointless, as studies have shown that many prepubescent children with gender dysphoria will have a different outcome in adulthood.
The most common cause of their feelings can, in fact, be sexuality rather than gender identity. A teenager can realise that they are gay or bisexual without being transgender.
Many girls who feel like boys or boys who feel like girls aged 10 could find their relationship to their bodies settles down quite comfortably by the time they are 16. We need to be careful what we label children. Emilie Lamplough
Trowbridge, Wiltshire SIR – I am presently female, aged 75. As a child I had an elder and a younger brother and, oh, how I wanted to be a boy!
Neither brother did the washing up or the putting away, neither helped in changing the bed linen, the vacuuming or any other household chore. It fell to me to help my mother.
At 15 years of age things changed. My elder brother’s friends and girl friends’ brothers became interesting and I was glad to be female.
My brothers continued to be pretty useless around the house, and I had been subtly trained in household management.
I am glad I didn’t have the opportunity, if that is what it is, to question my gender. Jennifer Hill
Haslemere, Surrey
SIR – Why restrict it to gender? What about the 10-year-olds who would prefer to be a cat or a dog? Albert Brooks
Woking, Surrey