Former staff at Tavistock’s gender clinic criticise lack of ‘safe handover’ to new services

A new report which looked into the systemic issues at the country’s only youth gender clinic, has revealed a lack of a “safe handover” to new services.

The clinic at the Tavistock and Portman centre, in North London, closed early last year, ahead of plans to open regional hubs across England and Wales as part of recommendations made in the Cass Report.

But a mixture of controversy and concern over new implementations has led clinicians to claim that the clinic’s closure was handled poorly and that its restructuring is “shoddy, disorganised [and] messy“.

In a report published by activist group What The Trans!? on Monday (17 February), two clinicians who worked at the clinic claimed there was “no safe plan” for the restructuring.

The clinicians, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said staff were only told about the closure on the same day as the media.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which oversaw the clinic, reportedly said the reason staff weren’t told sooner was out of fear the news would be leaked to the public.

“There was no safe handover from the old service to the new service,” one of the clinicians is reported to have said, adding that the trust knew about the clinic’s fate “18 months before the closure date,” while staff were only given two months’ notice.

The closure date was eventually postponed over concerns of the “complexity” of the project, eventually taking more than two years to complete.

During that time, staff reportedly raised concerns about the planned closure, but were allegedly told to “keep business as usual” and that “no questions should be raised”.

According to the whistle-blowers, an all-hands meeting was then scheduled, where they claimed “disciplinary actions” was threatened against staff who opposed the closure.

Clinicians were said to have been told they would be given new jobs at the regional hubs but “none of that happened”.

Several former members of staff were reportedly made redundant and denied a place in the new service, despite the whistle-blowers claiming: “The people the kids are going to see [at the new hubs] have no clinical experience. It is a disgrace.

“Would you send your kid to a dentist who has never pulled out a tooth before?”

What the Trans!? have expressed concerns over training materials handed to the new regional hubs, pointing to a report from last November by Trans Safety Network, with clinicians allegedly warned about “coercion from parents and carers”.

An expert told Trans Safety Network that the training materials have “nothing to offer” happy trans young people, and downplayed the “harms of transphobia”.