In the end it was NHS England that ordered the Tavistock trust to close down its gender identity clinic for children in the wake of a damning review by an eminent paediatrician.
But its far-reaching decision yesterday would never have been taken but for the brave voices of a few individuals who spoke out against the controversial centre.
Patients, parents and even the Tavistock’s own staff turned whistleblower, some putting their careers in jeopardy, to warn that vulnerable children unsure about their gender were being put at risk by being prescribed powerful drugs to stop the onset of puberty.
The first to raise concerns in 2005 was Sue Evans, a nurse at the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in north London.
She was worried that teenagers were being assessed too quickly and that treatment plans were being influenced by transgender rights groups.
Her fears were not made public at the time, however, and for a number of years few questions were asked about the soaring number of referrals the clinic was receiving, except by concerned parents’ groups led by Stephanie Davies-Arai.
Then in late 2018, a senior member of staff told the trust’s board that children were wrongly being fast-tracked into changing gender and the psychological and social reasons behind their feelings were being dismissed.
A group of parents also wrote to the board raising concerns that the GIDS team was being asked to ‘assess complex and difficult cases within a highly constrained...
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