New youth gender services further delayed

The opening of the first of the new NHS gender identity services for children has been further delayed, the BBC has learned.

Two new services will replace the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), based at London's Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

Initially due to open last spring, the London-based southern hub will now not be taking patients this autumn either.

A full mobilisation is now planned by April 2024.

As England and Wales's only NHS children's gender clinic, Gids has been earmarked for closure since July 2022, following an independent review into this area of healthcare, which recommended a new model of care.

The Tavistock clinic was rated as "inadequate" by inspectors who visited in late 2020 after the BBC's Newsnight programme reported whistle-blowers' concerns.

The subsequent review called for more "holistic" care, looking at patients' overall needs.

NHS England had originally hoped for Gids to be closed by spring this year, but said in May that the replacement services were not ready. A London-based southern hub would instead open in autumn, and a north of England hub in April 2024.

The NHS Children's and Young People's Gender Service for London is a partnership between Evelina London Children's Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital and the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

A spokesperson for the new service said setting up a "completely new service" was "complex" and could not confirm precisely when it would now open.

They said: "We are also focused on recruitment, training and ensuring good data collection which supports the developing research, and progress made in these areas will determine how quickly it will be possible to start seeing new patients off the waiting list."

There is currently a waiting list of about 8,000 children and young people wanting to use the service. Gids is not offering any first appointments to new patients.

An NHS England spokesperson said it has "fully supported" providers to "establish new services for children and young people".

"[These will] implement a fundamentally different model of care based on advice from the independent Cass review, and [we] expect providers to start seeing patients as soon as possible, with full-service mobilisation by April at the latest."