BBC
The NHS is to close the UK’s only dedicated gender identity clinic for children and young people.
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been told to shut the clinic by spring after it was criticised in an independent review.
Instead, new regional centres will be set up to “ensure the holistic needs” of patients are fully met, the NHS said.
The trust said it supported plans for a new model due to a rise in referrals.
The changes will take place after an independent review, led by Dr Hilary Cass, said the Tavistock clinic needed to be transformed.
She said the current model of care was leaving young people “at considerable risk” of poor mental health and distress, and having one clinic was not “a safe or viable long-term option”.
The new centres – one based in London and the other in the north west of England – should be fully open in spring 2023 and would run in conjunction with leading children’s hospitals, including Great Ormond Street and Alder Hey…
