2w ago

Children barred from getting new trans identity with NHS

www.telegraph.co.uk

Transgender children will be banned from getting a new NHS record following an intervention by Wes Streeting.
The health service has been ordered to stop issuing new NHS numbers to under-18s who want to change their gender, following a damning independent review.
Until now, adults or children of any age have been allowed to request a gender change on their medical record at any time.
[…]
Mr Streeting, the Health Secretary, declared that “children’s safety must come first” as he confirmed the changes on Thursday.
He said: “It’s completely wrong that children’s NHS numbers can be changed if they change gender, and I’ve made it clear this must not happen.
“We must deliver safe and holistic care for both adults and children when it comes to gender, and that also means accurately recording biological sex – not just for research and insight, but also for patient safety.
“I have always made it clear that doing so does not stop us from recording, recognising and respecting people’s gender identity where these differ.
“As we reform gender identity services across the board, we’ll take forward the serious research this review highlights.”

16 comments

Wes Streeting yet again jumping at the chance to make trans people's lives worse. Honestly don't think 'Tory-lite' does him justice anymore.
Some context to who wrote this "damning independent review":
The biased nature of this review was already clear. Not just from the leading questions used by the survey which presuppose that gender diversity and those researchers engaged in work to understand it are part of a sinister plot to silence and abuse ‘gender critical feminists’. But also from the way that Sullivan was commissioned by Michelle Donelan, then Conservative Secretary of State for DSIT, who then refused to answer any basic questions about the review’s ethics application.
The most clear sign of bias however is the choice of lead author. Prof. Alice Sullivan is a prominent anti-trans activist and advisory group member of the leading anti-trans lobby group, Sex Matters, notable for her work on UK literacy. The report also contains legal advice written by the husband of the Chair of the Sex Matters’ Trustee Board, Naomi Cunningham, and research was commissioned for the review to an organisation led by fellow member of the Sex Matters’ advisory group Lucy Hunter Blackburn. There is no evidence of the involvement of any trans person in the conducting of this analysis.

I thought the argument here was that biological sex and gender should be recorded as separate fields on NHS records because currently it is inconsistently used leading to clinical risk. The NHS number is not an identity document, it's meant to track your records over your lifetime of treatment in the NHS.

Terf island strikes again. What a bunch of miserable cunts.

Surely your actual "record" shouldn't change but the gender property on that record? As such you can change your gender (or name etc) as much as you want and your record is unaffected. From a book keeping / data management point of view that makes sense.
I suspect the real reason is that the NHS has a pretty shit record keeping system such that issuing new NHS numbers makes all that worse. I dunno, would you get a new NHS record if you changed your name? From a record keeping perspective isn't this the same?
- I suspect the real reason is that the NHS has a pretty shit record keeping system
  Yep honestly in genral this is true.
  But gender historically has not been a field expected to change. This is an easy fix when such medical information has no relevant on the use of the data. IE pretty much every other database used.
  But when you make a change where historical data needs to be kept. The age and design of such systems makes the changes much more complex and expensive.
  As a retired legacy systems software engineer. Where updating old database structures and all the systems related to them was my job for 20+ years.
  This would involve hunting down old and badly documented systems all over the nation.
  It is the need to address what would have been implemented as a fixed variable never expected to change. But also used to decide on many medical pathways. Even more so over the last 30 years as the medical industory has been correcting male dominated research bias on treatment pathways.
  And having to find every instance connected to it and ensure it can handle something that is now a data type with a historical status.
  Unfortunatly developers have historically implemented code with the expected prejudices society embodies. We were after all only human so did stupid human things with out knowing the potential harm.
  
  Oh so that's what they need AI for...
- Your NHS record has a gender marker that the system doesn't allow to be changed, so you need a completely new record (and number) to have it changed.
  
  That sounds like a programming limitation that should be amended then, rather than requiring the re-issue of a new number just because somebody can’t be arsed to write the code to allow it to be changed.
  The NHS systems are so antiquated at this point. They really need a complete re-write to be fit for purpose.

I wonder if part of this is because they want to use NHS numbers for children in schools as a consistant identifier. I wouldn't be shocked if that was part of the reasoning.

16 comments