EBSWA Webinar 2 on working with children with issues of gender identity. Stella O'Malley starts off.

When I was a child I wanted to be a boy. "Non binary before it existed". Everyone saw me as a boy.

Then came puberty.

Here is a question to ask those promoting gender affirmative care.

Please provide high grade evidence that a child has an immutable gender identity?

There is none. But there are decades of empirical evidence that a child's sense of their own gender is in constant flux. Every child goes through massive developmental changes as they mature -see Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson etc. The evidence is clear but has been set aside.

Why would a child's sense of their own gender remain static, while all other aspects of their body, mind, brain develop?

1/ Sonia Appleby is an experienced social worker who qualified in 1981. She has a long career in safeguarding children and is currently the named Designated Safeguarding Children Lead for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. 2/ She is responsible for ensuring that children and young people treated at the Tavistock are protected from avoidable harm, and to recognise when children are in need of safeguarding. This is a statutory role which public organisations must have.

1/ An important new research study examining the clinical characteristics of children presenting at an Australian gender clinic and the challenges faced by the treating clinicians.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… 2. The children presented with high levels of distress including suicidal ideation (41.8%), self-harm (16.3%) and suicide attempts (10.1%).

There were high rates of comorbid mental health disorders including anxiety , depression behavioural disorders and autism.

From the the judgement on #KieraBell case.

" The sole legal issue in the case is the circumstances in which a child or young person may be competent to give valid consent to treatment in law and the process by which consent to the treatment is obtained." "We note here that we find it surprising that such data was not collated in previous years given the young age of the patient group, the experimental nature of the treatment and
the profound impact that it has. "

In other words, why did Tavistock not collate data for evidence?