No She Wasn’t…

There is an article behind a Telegraph firewall that I have been trying to read about the nurse who stopped trans children from getting puberty blockers.

Why I was right to blow the whistle on the Tavistock Clinic over puberty blockers
Seeing distressed youngsters pushed towards transitioning drove Susan Evans to the High Court – its ruling is her vindication

All I could read was…

Thirteen years ago, Susan Evans – then a clinical nurse with the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London – walked out.

So I googled her. Nursing Times had this article from last January.

Nurse seeks to raise consent age for transgender medication to 18
A mental health nurse is bringing a legal case against her previous NHS employer over concerns about its approach to gender transition treatment for children.
By Rebecca Gliroy
10 January, 2020


Susan Evans is pursuing High Court action against NHS England and Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the UK’s only gender identity development service (GIDS).

Ms Evans used to work at the GIDS and claims children as young as nine were being given “experiential and potentially harmful” hormone medication without thorough assessment.

She is working with an anonymous mother – referred to as Mother A – whose 15-year-old child with autism is on the GIDS waiting list.

The pair are planning to lodge legal papers this week in the High Court to begin a judicial review.

Their lawyers argue that providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children is illegal, because they cannot give valid consent.

As a nurse she should have realized that there is a difference between puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Puberty blockers as the name implies stops puberty and is totally reversible. While cross-sex hormones causes irreversible changes.

Ms Evans, who has launched a crowdfunding page to cover her legal fees, has spoken to Nursing Times about her motivation for taking the case to court.

She said she had previously raised concerns with the trust directly, but that she did not feel properly listened to.
[...]
But she claimed she saw patients at the trust were being assessed and then “after four or five sessions” being referred to the endocrinology clinic. “That’s when I started to be horrified,” she told Nursing Times.
[…]
“They start the blockers and then they go on the cross-sex hormones. [The trust’s] own research shows that virtually 100% of children they started on the blockers go on to the cross-sex hormones.”

According to Ms Evans, the trust described using puberty blockers as a “pause” so that patients had time to consider their options, but during this time they were not routinely given psychotherapy.

By what I read the court stopped those under 18 from taking puberty blockers.

Having bad therapist is one thing but an across the board banning puberty blockers is wrong. Yes, they are under 18 the age of consent in Britain but not taking them is going to cause irreversible harm to the children!

For trans girls it will cause everlasting harm of going through puberty and having their voice deepen and their beard to grow, while trans boys will start to menstruate and develop breast.
Barriers such as those Ms Evans was proposing would make access to treatment even more difficult for vulnerable young people, said the spokeswoman.

She continued: “Puberty blockers can be an important step in some young trans people's medical transition, and one which is taken only with the full understanding of the gravity behind any decision.

“To compound a young person's distress by denying them time to decide what the best course of action is for them – which is the purpose puberty blockers/delayers serve – would not just be unethical but unnecessarily cruel.”

I wonder if the judge really knew what she was doing? If she realized that the effects of puberty blockers are reversible?

The BBC wrote…

In a ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Lewis and Mrs Justice Lieven, said: "It is highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers.

"It is doubtful that a child aged 14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences of the administration of puberty blockers."
From what she said it does sound like that she didn’t have a clue what they do.

I wonder how many suicides will this court ruling cause? How many youth will live a life of misery because they went through puberty?

There was a letter-to-the-editor in the Guardian about this...

There is already a suitable competency test in medical law for children under the age of 16, writes Steven Walker, while the mother of a transgender child fears the impact the court decision will have on her daughter

The high court ruling that those under the age of 16 are unlikely to be able to give informed consent to undergo treatment for gender dysphoria will cause much harm (Puberty blockers: under-16s ‘unlikely to be able to give informed consent’, 1 December). The Gillick competence test is used in medical law to decide whether a child under the age of 16 is able to consent to their own treatment, without the need for parental permission or knowledge.

In the area of child and adolescent mental health, there is an increasing demand for help from very disturbed, anxious, and unhappy children feeling trapped inside the “wrong” body. Clinicians do not make hasty judgments and they bend over backwards to keep open communication with parents and engage children in long, comprehensive tests and counselling sessions before embarking on treatments. Sixteen is an arbitrary age because children mature at different rates. Each case should be decided on its separate merits. The danger is that this new ruling will be used unilaterally and set an unhelpful precedent, and end up doing more harm than good.