Around a year ago, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) announced that Dr. Hilary Cass, former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, would conduct an independent review of transgender youth healthcare services for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the institute in the NHS responsible for evaluating the base evidence behind diagnostic modalities and treatments and then making recommendations regarding which of them should be offered by the NHS.
In the UK, transgender medical services are primarily administered through the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) for Children and Adolescents, which is managed by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.
NICE reported its intention to focus on key aspects of care and inform clinical decisions around youth with gender dysphoria.
Its review was commissioned specifically to address the “significant increase in the number of referrals [to GIDS] at a time when the service has moved from a psychosocial and psychotherapeutic model to one that also prescribes medical interventions by way of hormone drugs”.
Per the terms of reference for review of GIDS, “this has contributed to growing interest in how the NHS should most appropriately assess, diagnose and care for children and young people who present with gender incongruence and gender identity issues”.
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Those of us involved in transgender healthcare agree that guidelines should meet the same high-quality standards followed by other fields of medicine. For this to happen, we need resources and funding for trans healthcare research, regular and consistent data collection on gender identity, and destigmatization of the trans community.
Trans children deserve love, support, and thoughtful medical care as much as cis children do. Trans children are targets in the current political and culture wars; the tide should shift to supporting and protecting this vulnerable population.
