Dr David Bell, former staff governor at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation trust, on its Gender Identity Development Service
When considering the interim report by Dr Hilary Cass on gender identity services for children and young people, your article overemphasises the long waiting list and underemphasises that it was a waiting list for the wrong treatment, as Cass makes clear (‘A contentious place’: the inside story of Tavistock’s NHS gender identity clinic, 19 January).
A clinician you quote says some staff left the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) “in a destructive way”. They did not – they raised serious concerns with their managers which resulted in their intimidation. These concerns were borne out by the Cass review – particularly that as a result of the ideological penetration of Gids, it abandoned clinical neutrality and downplayed the significance of other serious conditions in this patient group. The Cass report makes clear that these children have been disadvantaged and that there is a lack of evidence for the “Dutch Approach” to treating them, involving puberty blockers.
