An NHS Trust taking over care of trans children from
the Tavistock clinic is being trained by controversial charity Mermaids, The Telegraph can reveal.
The charity, which is at the centre of a number of safeguarding rows and is
currently under investigation by the regulator, will provide sessions for staff at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM) starting this month.
It comes as the Trust takes over specialist mental health support for children questioning their gender identity as part of a regional service set up to replace the Tavistock after it was found
that its service was “not safe”.
Mermaids’ influence on the Tavistock was cited by some whistle-blowers as one of the reasons why it lost its way, with claims that activists put pressure on clinicians to affirm children’s belief that they were trans and to prescribe potentially life-altering drugs.
The Charity Commission is currently carrying out a statutory inquiry into Mermaids amid concerns over its governance and management.
SLaM has insisted that the training is not related to their roles in the new gender identity clinic. It is the second year running the Trust has had “ LGBT+ awareness training” from the charity.
Medics
who blew the whistle on Tavistock said that the trans charity’s involvement with SLaM is a cause for “concern” and that previous training has been “inaccurate and misleading”. They called for a “completely different approach” at the new NHS service.
‘Inaccurate and misleading’
For eighteen years, staff warned that Tavistock medics were being put under pressure by trans campaign groups such as Mermaids, leading to fear that they would be labelled transphobic if they questioned whether a child had gender dysphoria.
Young people
were being rushed through assessments without other medical conditions being considered and potentially life-altering drugs were being doled out to children without evidence, a review of the service has found.
Sue Evans, a Tavistock nurse who first raised concerns in 2005, told The Telegraph: “My experience was that groups like Mermaids exerted pressure on the clinical service which was not always helpful in terms of thinking about patients holistically.
“Given that Hilary Cass has asked for care to be evidence-based and holistic, I have serious concerns about Mermaids providing training to staff at SLaM.
“I have not seen their current training materials yet, but based on past experience I would be concerned that they would be promoting an affirmation-only model which lacks an evidence base and does not take into account the complexities of children’s needs and backgrounds. The Mermaids teaching materials that I have seen were inaccurate and misleading.”
After years of controversy at the Tavistock, an interim review, led by Dr Hilary Cass, said that it was “not safe” and there needed to be a “fundamentally different” service.
The NHS announced in July that
Tavistock’s gender identity clinic for children would be replaced by regional centres led by experts in paediatric health.
Serious concerns
SLaM, which is a Stonewall Diversity Champion, will provide specialist mental health services at the London clinic, which is being led by a partnership between Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Evelina London Children’s Hospital.
Despite the serious concerns about its treatment,
the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust will be providing support to the new regional centres.
It is expected that the new services will begin in the spring. Before taking control, the Trust booked a number of training sessions to be delivered by Mermaids.
Mermaids say that its Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training is “tailored to the needs of your organisation, exploring: gender diversity, barriers faced by trans people, transitioning and treatment pathways, and ways to improve your diversity policies and procedures.”
Slides from a previous training session shared on social media included a scale from one to 10 with a Barbie on one side and a GI Joe on the other and asked: “Where on the spectrum might your gender identity be?” Mermaids claimed that the scale was tongue-in-cheek.
It comes as the Mermaids are subject to
a statutory inquiry by the Charity Commission.
The regulator announced that they were first investigating Mermaids in September after The Telegraph revealed that they were sending potentially dangerous breast-binding devices to children behind their parents’ backs and discussing how drugs were “totally reversible”.
Last month, the regulator announced that it would be escalating its investigation to a statutory inquiry “due to newly identified issues about the charity’s governance and management”.
Consultant psychotherapist Dr Marcus Evans, who resigned from the Trust over their treatment of whistle-blowers, told The Telegraph “There are a lot of parents who are already worried after Tavistock said it would be involved in advising the new service providers, and now
Mermaids is offering training as well.
“The old service system is discredited. We need a completely different approach that avoids preoccupation with gender to the exclusion of all other facets of the family, child and young person’s personality and development.”
A SLaM spokesman said: “This training is not related to the development of an early adopter service for children and young people experiencing gender incongruence and gender dysphoria.
“We commission as well as directly provide high-quality professional training courses from a wide range of providers as part of our training offer for our staff to further support the provision of personalised, safe and therapeutic care for young people and adults using mental health services.”
A spokesman for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust said: “The Trust has a clear position of independence, and engages with a number of support groups with a range of different positions. We are committed to providing an environment where staff can work thoughtfully with each individual patient with no preferred outcome in mind.”
