Transgender children up 1,000% in 5 years

THE number of children receiving treatment because they believe they were born the wrong gender has risen by nearly 1,000 per cent in five years.

The NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) treated 1,013 children between April and December last year, at a cost to the taxpayer of almost £2.7million.

This is up from just 97 children in the year 2009-10 – a rise gender disorder experts have described as ‘extraordinary’.

Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London is the only one in the country that treats under-18s with gender identity disorder, and takes referrals from across the UK.

It also has clinics in Leeds, Brighton and Exeter, which each offer counselling for transgender children and their families.

In some cases, children undergoing puberty are given hormone blocking treatments, according to The Sun. However, sex change operations are not available for children. The trust says it ‘would not generally consider it helpful to make a formal diagnosis in very young children’, and any physical intervention is not considered until a child approaches puberty.

Yesterday Dr Polly Carmichael, director of the GIDS, said: ‘This increase is extraordinary.

‘It has become very difficult now to predict whether referrals will carry on rising.’

Suggesting that the rise in young patients may be due to increased awareness about transgender issues, a spokesman for the Tavistock and Portman Clinic added: ‘Year on year we’ve seen a rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service, and there’s not one straightforward explanation for why.

‘It seems likely that increased media coverage and the rise in the use of social media among young people has raised awareness and reduced stigma.

‘Today, young people seem to be more interested in exploring gender ... There is no pre- determined diagnosis, or fixed outcomes and it’s certainly not a question of being “transgender” or “not”. It’s about young people having the freedom to decide who they are, themselves. Not all of the children seen by the clinic will fulfil the criteria for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and not all of these will make a decision to transition.’

Gender issues campaigners have dismissed claims that children who question their gender are just ‘going through a phase’. Experts say up to one in 125,000 people has a gender identity disorder, but that as many as 1 per cent of the population experience transgender feelings to some extent.

Bernard Reed, of the Gender Identity Research and Education Society, said that ‘demand for treatment is overwhelming the NHS. It takes three years waiting, on average, to be seen at an adult clinic. It was 18 weeks for a child. There’s a lot of unmet need’.

He added: ‘This is not a freakish thing. Gender identity is as central to a person as being born left or right handed. People don’t just wake up one morning and suddenly feel they want to be different. It’s embedded in our brains.’

Schools across Britain have reported having pupils who say they are transgender, with 13 now facing a possible legal challenge after teachers refused to allow pupils to change gender.

Experts believe it is only a matter of time before a landmark case is brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission against one of them.

‘Overwhelming the NHS’