Mick Hartley

On the other hand, in contrast to the rosy view of Cass below, here's some more worrying news. The battle is by no means over:

The NHS has been accused of ignoring the Cass review recommendations on transgender care for children.

Dr Hilary Cass’s report advised that under-18s should not be rushed into treatment which they may later regret following concerns about care at the Tavistock clinic.

However, a new NHS centre has snubbed the Cass review in favour of discredited transgender guidance that promotes both puberty blockers and surgery without age limits.

The Nottingham Young People’s Gender Service was founded in April to give psychological and social support to children with gender dysphoria who were former Tavistock patients and are currently taking or waiting to start puberty blockers.

In a job advertisement for a clinical psychologist position, the centre says it is “essential” to “practice [sic] in a gender affirming manner in line with” guidance from the controversial World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH).

WPATH, in case you haven't been paying attention, are the bad guys here – staunch US advocates of "gender affirming care" and unrelenting opponents of the Cass findings.

The WPATH guidelines call for removing any minimum age to transition and lowering the age threshold for puberty blockers and surgery.

Campaigners fear the service is at risk of becoming “Tavistock version 2”.

Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at human rights charity Sex Matters, said: “Dr Cass warned that [WPATH guidance] promoted childhood social transition without evidence that this was safe or beneficial.

“Earlier this year, leaked materials from WPATH revealed the cavalier attitude of many gender clinicians towards patient wellbeing and informed consent.

“The point of closing the disgraced Tavistock clinic in London was to learn from its mistakes and replace it with something better. This job ad is a deeply concerning sign that the Nottingham clinic risks becoming Tavistock v2.”

The NHS said the advert had used “old terminology” and was being amended when contacted by The Telegraph.

Dr Louise Irvine, the co-chairman of the Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, said: “It is extremely concerning that the Nottingham Young People Gender Service job advertisement indicates that it is continuing to follow the discredited medicalised ‘affirmative’ approach to children and young people with gender dysphoria.

“This flies in the face of the Cass review whose findings were supposedly accepted by NHS England and the government.

“The Cass review appraised WPATH’s latest guidelines and found they were based on very weak evidence. Court documents in the USA reveal that WPATH actively suppressed research it had commissioned that did not have the outcomes it wanted,” she added….

Senior doctors at the centre are or have been members of WPATH, and have been openly critical of Dr Cass’s review, which found a lack of evidence to support prescribing puberty blockers to children and urged caution in the treatment of all under-25s.

Dr Walter Pierre Bouman, a senior doctor at the Nottingham Centre for Transgender Health and past president at WPATH, described the review as “poorly reasoned”. He added that there was “a fine line between naivety, narcissism and psychopathy”.

Prof Jon Arcelus is another doctor at the centre and was formerly a co-chairman of the committee responsible for developing the controversial WPATH guidance.

The advert for a psychologist to work with gender-questioning children made no mention of the Cass report, despite requiring knowledge of the WPATH guidance.

It's like whack-a mole – keeps on popping up however often it's beaten down.