Private youth gender clinic approved by regulator

A private hormone clinic for transgender young people has become the first in the UK to receive approval from England’s health watchdog.

The Gender Plus Hormone Clinic has been approved by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to prescribe hormones for those over the age of 16.

It comes just weeks before the only NHS gender-identity service for children in England and Wales is to shut down, with replacement services promised to open this spring.

Young people questioning their gender identity currently face a wait of five years for a first appointment on the NHS.

The new clinic is part of private service Gender Plus, which offers young people questioning their gender identity psychological support for a fee.

On its website, the CQC says new services are checked to ensure they are “safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well led”.

The approval means Gender Plus, which has offices in London, Birmingham and Dublin, will be able to prescribe hormones to over-16s in the UK who have been assessed by a team of clinical psychologists across a minimum of six sessions.

Not all patients will be suitable for hormones, clinicians say, and the clinic will not prescribe puberty-blocking treatment.

Some transgender people take cross-sex hormones to help change their physical characteristics and relieve distress about their body not aligning with their gender identity.

The NHS says their long-term use, external may have some side effects and can eventually lead to permanent infertility.

Care for children and young people struggling with their gender identity has been at the centre of controversy and debate over recent years.

The Gender Identity Development Service (Gids), part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, was rated "inadequate" by the CQC and is set to close at the end of March.

An independent report commissioned by NHS England, external called for care to be "fundamentally different", as the complex needs of some young people, such as eating disorders or autism-spectrum disorders, had been overlooked.

Gender Plus is run by a number of clinicians who worked at Gids previously.

Senior clinical psychologist and founder Dr Aidan Kelly said: “In this area where there’s so much scrutiny and uncertainty from parents, patients and other professionals, this [CQC approval] is a stamp of approval and lets people know we are held to the highest standard.”

Patients would be offered support that took into account their gender, neurodiversity, sexual orientation and mental health, to develop a care plan, he added.

New NHS clinics are set to open in the south of England in April, with another in the north-west in the autumn.

The NHS has predicted there will be more than 3,000 referrals per year.