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The Gender Identity and Development Service (also known as GIDS) at London’s NHS Tavistock and Portman finally closed for good on Sunday. The health service insists that new regional hubs in London and Liverpool will be ready to open on April 1, but experts are still concerned about continuity of care for vulnerable children.
Once the world’s largest gender identity clinic for children, the Tavistock was ordered to close in July 2022 after a report from Dr Hillary Cass found the current service “unsustainable” and called for a “fundamentally different” model.
The original plan to replace it with two regional hubs has already been delayed by more than a year.
In January, four experts resigned from a team writing training guidance for the new gender services, reportedly after disagreements over the training model. Leaked Tavistock emails reported by the BBC suggest a chaotic process, with employees raising concerns about poor communication with patients including appointments cancelled without notice.
The climate for transgender people in the UK has deteriorated rapidly. According to Home Office data transphobic hate crimes have increased 11 per cent since 2022, and Rishi Sunak seemed to question the validity of transgender identities both in a speech at the Conservative conference and in Parliament in front of murdered trans teenager Brianna Ghey’s mother.
In March, NHS England announced that children would no longer be prescribed puberty blockers at gender identity clinics because of a finding in the interim report of a review commissioned by the health service that there was “not enough evidence” they were safe or effective. Blockers are still being prescribed privately through organisations like GenderGP and Gender Plus.
The number of referrals to GIDS went from 138 in 2010-11 to 2,383 in 2020-21. Since the Tavistock was ordered to close it has not taken any new patients forward for assessment, focussing only on continuity of care for current patients. There are currently almost 8,000 children and young people waiting for their first appointment at a gender identity service in England and Wales. According to BBC estimates, it would take 10 years to clear the current waiting list backlog. Many young people “age out” before their first appointment and are required to restart the process through the adult gender services.
An NHS spokesperson called the transition “a complex piece of work” and said all families had received a letter informing them of the changes.
This article was amended on 3 April