Iworked for eleven years as a consultant clinical psychologist at the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), the sole NHS service for gender-diverse young people, based at the Tavistock Clinic in London. It’s a job history I no longer disclose when I meet people. The work of the GIDS team has been the subject of unceasing media – and social media – attack in...
If a whistle-blowing report on the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock Clinic was needed, I wish I’d written it myself. It would have highlighted the isolation of a group of conscientious clinicians who were trying to cope, in the absence of adequate support, funding and external expertise, with complex clinical, empirical, legal and procedural challenges while an upheaval in cultural narratives of sex and gender took place across the country. GIDS became the scapegoat in a society that needs to look more boldly and intelligently at how we should accommodate a great many new forms of pressure for change.
