Caring for Gender Variant youngsters.
Medical care for gender variant young people: Dealing with the practical problems.
Article published in Sexologies Volume 17, Issue 4, October–December 2008, Pages 258–264.
GIRES takes a keen interest in the medical care offered to gender variant young people. Adult transsexual people often express the wish that they had received treatment at this stage of their lives. However, the treatment offered to young trans people in the UK diverges markedly from that offered in some other countries.
Hospitalisation
When admited to hospital gender variant children and young people should be accorded the same respect for their self-defined gender as are trans adults, regardless of their genital sex. Advice on legal and practical aspects can be found here.
Consent FormsConsent forms for download intended to protect both service users and clinicians by ensuring that proper information has been given and fully understood before embarking on treatment. The forms relevant to hormone treatment may be provided at the first appointment, so that service users have the opportunity to take the forms away and consider any gaps in their knowledge while waiting for basic blood tests to be done. Although hormone treatment will almost always follow, this should not be presumed to be an automatic process since tests may reveal serious contra-indications.
At present, there is only one centre that provides treatment for gender variant young people – the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust in London. The contrast between the treatment provided by this service and that offered in overseas centres was highlighted by two conferences in London in the Autumn of 2008 at Imperial College and the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM).
UK Case Studies
- A mother and father's experience with a twelve-year-old gender variant child
- Letters from a 16½ year old trans girl to her two clinicians
Overseas treatment
A number of overseas treatment centres follow the standards of care published by the Harry Benjaman International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) (subsequently renamed as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)).
An explicit comparison of the the approachs taken in Britain and the Netherlands can be found here.
The British Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes (BSPED) has published its amended statement on caring for children and adolescents with gender identity disorder. It permits flexibility and deviation from “current practice”, without defining what that is. Nonetheless, the statement opens the way for adolescents who experience profound and persistent gender dysphoria to be offered early suspension of puberty. The statement can be found here
Funding provided by the Nuffield Foundation and other charitable donors has enabled GIRES to undertake a highly important project. Its purpose is to improve the treatment offered, in the UK and other countries, to adolescents who experience profound and persistent discomfort with the gender role assigned at birth because it clashes with their innate gender identities. The final report may be found here.
Consensus Report on Symposium in May 2005
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