The NHS has U-turned on controversial transgender plans after a revolt by midwives.
NHS England had been trying to recruit a group since Dec 16 to run “trans and non-binary birthing people” training across 40 NHS maternity services, including trans-inclusive language and pronouns.
A tender document offered £100,000 taxpayer funding and also sought online resources, information posters and “best practice examples of how to care for trans and non-binary birthing people”.
The scheme was underpinned by taxpayer-funded research by the LGBT Foundation, a charity which ran a session last year on “LGBTQ+ sex toy delights” and called for nephews and nieces to be replaced with the gender-neutral term “niblings”.
Some 300 nurses, midwives and psychologists wrote to Lizzie Streeter, the NHS national LGBT programme manager behind the project, warning it had “no evidence base” and put maternity wards “at risk of ideological capture”.
Two days after the letter was sent on Jan 9, NHS England backtracked and told bidders that “the contract has been withdrawn early” while officials launch a review into its evidence base.
With Woman, the group of maternity staff which coordinated the letter, also signed by 1,700 members of the public, said it was a “watershed moment” for health staff rooting out trans ideology from the inside.
“This may be one of the first times a major programme based on flawed research and linked to gender activist organisations has been prevented in the UK public sector,” they said.
“At least for us in the maternity sector, it is a watershed moment and gives us great encouragement that ideologically-driven schemes with no evidence base will have no place in NHS maternity services.”
An NHS Trust taking over care of trans children from the Tavistock clinic is being trained by controversial charity Mermaids, The Telegraph can reveal.
The charity, which is at the centre of a number of safeguarding rows and is currently under investigation by the regulator, will provide sessions for staff at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM) starting this month.
It comes as the Trust takes over specialist mental health support for children questioning their gender identity as part of a regional service set up to replace the Tavistock after it was found that its service was “not safe”.
Mermaids’ influence on the Tavistock was cited by some whistle-blowers as one of the reasons why it lost its way, with claims that activists put pressure on clinicians to affirm children’s belief that they were trans and to prescribe potentially life-altering drugs….
Medics who blew the whistle on Tavistock said that the trans charity’s involvement with SLaM is a cause for “concern” and that previous training has been “inaccurate and misleading”. They called for a “completely different approach” at the new NHS service.
It's like whack-a-mole…whack-a-gender-activist. They just keep on coming.
Mick Hartley 
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