Trans Healthcare And Toolkit Come Under Scrutiny

A pilot project to provide gender services in Sussex, rather than having people travel to London, is now halfway through its three-year programme.

Brighton and Hove City Council’s Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee quizzed representatives of Sussex Gender Services about the project at Hove Town Hall on Wednesday (29 January).

The pilot, run by Sussex Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, has been running for just over a year.

So far, more than 300 people have been seen and the service aims to work with 40 cases a month, consultant clinical psychologist Kat Allen said.

Dr Allen said that one person had waited seven years to reach the gender services specialist although the aim is a maximum wait of three years.

Councillors were told that once patients reached the service, they had two assessments – one carried out by the Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health – before moving forward with hormone treatment.

Labour councillor Jackie O’Quinn asked about young people and a trend for more teenage girls to seek to transition and the age at which they received care and support.

Dr Allen said that the service specification was for 17-plus but the reality of waiting lists meant that the youngest clients were 19 or 20.

The Sussex Gender Services update came days after councillors approved the fifth version of the Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit.

Campaign group PSHE Brighton has criticised the report as not compliant with the Cass Report which “distinguishes between social transition” where individuals change their name and pronouns, both before and after adolescence.

Councillors were told that PSHE Brighton was supporting a family taking legal action against a doctors’ surgery, the WellBN Clinic.

The campaign group believes that the surgery acted unlawfully by prescribing cross-sex drugs to a 13-year-old and the NHS Sussex Integrated Care Board did so too by funding the treatment.

At the cabinet meeting, PSHE member Adrian Hart raised the case when asking about the new toolkit.

Mr Hart said:

“How will the Toolkit V5 prevent the ‘classroom to clinic pipeline’ that has developed across the city, something highlighted in the recent High Court case launched by a Brighton parent against the NHS and which began with a child being socially transitioned in a local secondary school?

“I’m sure cabinet will want to reassure parents that the activist organisation Allsorts Youth Project will cease its activities inside schools in facilitating this pipeline.”

Labour councillor Emma Daniel said that the toolkit said that schools should not make decisions about medical treatment and she declined to comment on an active court case.

PSHE Brighton sent a formal response which was noted by Labour council leader Bella Sankey.

The response said:

“Edition 5 of the toolkit attempts to circumvent both Cass and the Monaghan advice by referencing both of these, finding forms of words that acknowledge the need to have regard to all protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 and the Cass review, but then proceeding to keep nearly all elements that contravene equality and human rights legislation that do not comply with Cass or address safeguarding concerns.

“(And) by passing off responsibility to schools by saying it is up to them to ensure compliance with evidence, policy and law and saying that the council’s toolkit is non-prescriptive schools and other educational settings are exposed to potential litigation, while enabling the council to protect itself from challenge.”

Green councillor Kerry Pickett backed the toolkit and said that local children were lucky to live in a place where their wellbeing took precedence.

Councillor Pickett said:

“Shockingly, Brighton and Hove is now the only council brave enough to revise its trans toolkit and maintain its use.

“All other councils have withdrawn their toolkits, not because they don’t believe in them or think they provide good guidance, but because they have been bullied by fear that they may be sued, something few councils can ill afford.

“I salute the bravery of this council to not only refuse to bow to the bully tactics of such groups but also to put the lives of these children and the staff that teach them at the forefront of policy.”

Fellow Green councillor Raphael Hill said that fears about transgender people being part of an ideology were similar to those surrounding gay people back in the 1980s.

Councillor Hill said:

“I claim I exist and I am a woman who is transgender. I was a child and I was transgender when I was a child although I did not have the words that could describe my experience at that time.

“People like me exist in every country in the world, even in the most repressive regimes on this planet. Treating our existence as an ideology and as a disease won’t make us disappear.”