Campaigners have expressed fears after the number of young people seeking to change their sex rose by a fifth.
The 5,500 people are in the queue for treatment at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at Tavistock and Portman Trust in London.
Stephanie Davies-Arai, founder of campaign group Transgender Trend, said it was “concerning”.
“Children don’t have the life experience to know how to interpret what they often experience. They are bombarded with messages about being trans and that all of their problems, insecurities and anxieties are because they are trans.
“They think these teenage anxieties are about being trans. They are sent to Tavistock and put on puberty blockers. It is easy to fall into this trap and it has been made worse by Covid. »
Trans activist Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne has called for a ‘slow’ and ‘calm’ assessment of children who want to change their gender.
Senior Tavistock officials have expressed concerns that “the list has grown significantly during the lockdown”. Trust chairman Paul Burstow, a former Liberal Democrat health minister, said the growing waiting list was a “concern” for trustees.
The numbers are up sharply from an estimate made last year.
In January 2021, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said that after inspecting the GIDS there were 4,600 on the list. It saw a spike in cases from 138 in 2010/11 to 2,383 ten years later.
At the start of the last decade, most children referred for treatment were male-born, but young female-born children now dominate.
The CQC found numerous failings after whistleblowers raised concerns that GIDS was failing to properly support vulnerable children and pushed them into sex reassignment treatments.
Doctors felt pressured to take a hard-line approach to children seeking gender reassignment, a recent study found, while a lack of formal clinical advice and stifled debate made many doctors “nervous” about the idea of providing the “stronger support” they want to provide.
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Source: www.express.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-03-20 22:46:19
