NHS puts trans teens at ‘risk of harm’, warns gender clinic head

NHS ENGLAND (NHSE) is putting trans teenagers at “unreasonable risk of irreversible harm”, the head of a gender clinic will warn in a legal battle over treatment.

Two mothers are suing the health service over concerns that as soon as a teenager turns 17, they can transfer to adult gender clinics and be fast-tracked to surgery and sex-change drugs.

This is despite a recent crackdown on treatment for under-18s, including a ban on puberty blockers and a guarantee of assessment of underlying mental-health conditions before treatment is given for gender issues.

The mothers, who both have “vulnerable” teenage daughters seeking sexchange surgery, are now taking the case to the High Court in an attempt to force NHSE to guarantee the same protections at adult clinics.

Dr Karl Neff, the head of Ireland’s National Gender Service, will warn the judge that the treatment currently offered to adults in England “will not fully meet their needs or offer them adequate protection and thereby will place them at unreasonable risk of irreversible harm”.

The judge will hear that in 2019, 17-year-olds made up 18 per cent of referrals to adult gender services, the largest single group by age. Since then, NHSE has written to all those of that age who were on the Tavistock waiting list telling them that instead they will go straight to the adult clinic.

Anna Castle, one of the mothers bringing the case, said that “something needs to be done about the lack of evidence-based and multi-disciplinary care and the fact that our children and vulnerable people are being sent on a one-way pathway without having any of their other conditions considered”.

Ms Castle said sex-change surgery “is the most extreme decision anyone could make about their body”.

“But it has the least amount of safeguarding and preliminary investigation into whether it is actually necessary and then there is no evidence as to whether it actually helps,” she added.

Dr Neff said that “a major discrepancy” between the NHSE service for adults and the model of care at his clinic was that in England there is no “mandated specialist mental-health assessment”.

Ms Castle and the second mother, listed only as XYZ, will launch an appeal for permission to hold a judicial review at London’s High Court on Tuesday.

An NHS spokesman said a written application for the permission was rejected by the High Court in December last year “including because there was no arguable case”.

The spokesman said: “The court accepted that NHS England’s service specifications for both adult and children’s gender services are aimed at securing personalised and specialised assessments that address all aspects of the patient’s history and presentation, and that they are conducted by experienced clinicians.”

‘A sex change is the most extreme decision anyone could make’