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Concerns about autism or parental pressure were allegedly dismissed by Carmichael. Children were turning up identifying as other ethnicities such as Japanese. By 2017, three quarters of their patients were girls, a dramatic shift from the years up to 2010, when the majority were boys. Were they not asking why? Barnes speaks to many former employees including Sonia Appleby, who was the ‘professional for safeguarding children’ at the centre for before she was dismissed. She was awarded compensation for wrongful dismissal. Interestingly some of the other people Barnes talks to were gay and believed that there was homophobia at GIDS. Some parents were also described as homophobic. At one point, that's how it was described to me. So I think it was very difficult for people to speak out. Lots of different competing emotions. But I don't want to suggest that others who didn't speak to me don't care about these young people, either. I think it's a story about how well intentioned people can go wrong. And an intervention that is well intentioned, can be overused for a group for whom it wasn't intended, perhaps. Hannah Milton of BJGP Life explains that Barnes' approach to writing the book was "very rigorous" and that Barnes "comes across as a compassionate writer" who was objective, "fair and balanced". However, reading the "fastidiously documented" book was "heavy going at times" and ultimately "doesn’t give any answers about how a gender service should be run". [12] Suzanne Moore from The Daily Telegraph called it "well-researched" and notes that "Barnes is not coming at this from an ideological viewpoint." [13] Janice Turner of The Times said it was a "sober, rhetoric-free and meticulously researched" account. [14] Awards [ edit ] Award
Time to Think by Hannah Barnes review - The Guardian
What is most inexcusable in this story is the fact that the failures of the early days of the service have simply been repeated down the years. The GIDS not only failed to take account of its own data, learn from it and put in place structures to ensure a safe service for children, it doubled down, allowing pressure from activists to dictate. The service became increasingly ideological, not less.
Time to Think
It was only when the first referrals were old enough to have their care transferred to the adult service at St Colmcille’s Hospital in Loughlinstown that concerns were raised. Not only is this pathway wrong, but unlike claims made to the contrary, it almost certainly is hurting children and we simply aren’t hearing enough of the detransition/regret stories (and neither are they) because it has turned into a bizarre political and ideological battle, where instead of encouraging free thinking, doctors and providers are being forced to STOP thinking and prescribe to the status quo, or find somewhere else to work.
Hannah Barnes: I told the truth about what was going on at Hannah Barnes: I told the truth about what was going on at
This is a great article from Transgender Trend. And I am certain the same will apply to the author mentioned although I have not read it. There are however two sides to every story and I wish to present mine. My story starts long ago (1940) when my mother took (well was it actually?) a drug, a man-made chemical, a supplement it has been called all those names, but whatever it was. Over the next three decades until it was banned (1971) this substance has caused a multitude of medical conditions that are attributed to it.I think there was a complicating factor that, in some cases, safeguarding concerns… you know, there was a grey area between the safeguarding concern and the trans identification. And the service was very keen not to stigmatise these young people, not to pathologise. And so, there was a line to tread whereby a concern about a young person wasn't a questioning of their gender identity. But on balance, many clinicians felt that the bar was too high. Because of that… fear, if you like, in the service, the bar was too high for referring, for taking these concerns as seriously perhaps as they would in other services.
Time to Think by Hannah Barnes review – what went wrong at
Many children referred to the service had suffered trauma, had mental health problems or had experienced ‘deprived or injurious upbringings.’” As numbers increased, the caseload per clinician increased beyond safety levels. In 2015, in an attempt to calm the over-worked clinicians, an organisational consultant was called in. The subsequent report warned that GIDS was “facing a crisis of capacity to deliver effectively on an ever-increasing demand for its service” and recommended immediate action to cap referrals. This was ignored by GIDS director, Polly Carmichael. The caseloads continued to rise, first 50, then 70, , 90 or 100 patients each. One clinician reported an astronomical caseload of 140 patients. With some caseloads comparative to the size of a small primary school it is little wonder that clinicians had difficulties recognising their patients when they arrived for their second appointment.
Yeah. And Sonia had not spoken before to anybody, so I was very grateful to her. Well, this was another aspect, if you like, of exceptionalism within GIDS. So you had clinicians saying what clinical concerns were not being reacted to in the same way that you'd expect in other services. And clinicians say safeguarding concerns weren't responded to in the same way that you would expect in other services dealing with children either. They say that in all other services they worked in if you were concerned, then you referred on, that's what you did. It didn't matter if that concern was true or not, because often you don't know. But you refer on. And they said that that didn't happen in GIDS, or not to the same level. This incredibly important book shows that we still don’t know how many children were damaged for life. I want every institution and every politician who pontificates about gender to read this book and ask what happened to all those lost girls and boys – and why they were complicit’ – Daily Telegraph The story begins in 1989 when a psychoanalyst called Dr Domenico di Ceglie became convinced there was a need for a clinic that focused on gender identity issues in children. . Whether GIDS operated within the framework of gender identity theory or a more developmental understanding of gender dysphoria never seemed to be properly clarified. This ambiguity seems to be a fatal flaw in the service as clinicians operated from different theoretical perspectives. Hannah Barnesis an award-winning journalist at the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Newsnight. She led its coverage of the care available to young people experiencing gender-related distress, which helped precipitate an extensive NHS review and unearthed evidence that was later used in several sets of legal proceedings. Newsnight’s reporting also led directly to an inspection by the healthcare regulator the Care Quality Commission, which branded the NHS’s only youth gender clinic in England ‘Inadequate.’ The management team of the clinic was disbanded as a result and the work was nominated for an array journalism awards, including the prestigious RTS Television Journalism Awards.
book by Hannah Barnes: ‘Time to Think: The Inside Review of book by Hannah Barnes: ‘Time to Think: The Inside
If a child has some of the minor gender non-conforming attributes that gay children can sometimes (but not always) possess, they would be happier to transition them than to accept their child's sexual orientation and let the child know that they are loved in all their gayness - a phenomenon that we know occurs in nature across all mammals. Media, T.V. & Radio Media stories, t.v. and radio coverage and representation of “trans kids” and parents The results were not good; “the children’s gender-related distress and general mental health – when based on clinical measures of things like self-harm, suicidal ideation and body image – had either plateaued or worsened.” Moreover, “Researchers reported a statistically significant increase in those answering the statement ‘I deliberately try to hurt or kill myself ’ as well as a significant increase in behavioural and emotional problems for natal girls.” Even though there was no clinically measurable positive impact on psychological well-being, GIDS chose instead to focus on the children’s self-reports of being “highly satisfied with the treatment”. The book has a narrow focus on GIDS and does not comment about the way in which the number of children with gender dysphoria increased so dramatically. This is to the book’s credit. The narrow focus on the exposition of events at GIDS in such a careful way is very impressive.Where was NHS England in all this? How did the Care Quality Commission judge the service ‘good’ in 2016 when the following year so many concerns were relayed to David Bell? A blunter question may be: why did the GIDS and the Trust not care enough about teenage girls, autistic, gay and troubled children to provide them with a service in line with normal standards of paediatric health care? Time to Think goes behind the headlines to reveal the truth about the NHS’s flagship gender service for children. Many of them were same-sex attracted – the same was true for the boys attending GIDS – and many were autistic. Their lives were complicated too,” Barnes writes.
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