This week’s Slow Newscast is an examination of the Tavistock clinic which is due to close early next year. It is the only NHS service offering treatment for children in England and Wales who have gender dysphoria.
The transgender debate is fraught. But for all the arguments we hear about prejudice, language and exclusion, it’s extraordinary how little we actually know about the treatment of trans children: What did the Tavistock prescribe? Who got to decide and how? And why, then, was it shut – was the service a lifeline or a scandal?
Nearly a year ago, we set out to understand the care and culture within the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service, commonly called “The Tavi”. We commissioned Polly Curtis, who had investigated the family courts and the ways the legal system can forcibly divide parents and children for Tortoise, to examine the choices made by clinicians at the Tavistock, the experience of adolescents and their families and the evidence of the science that’s often drowned out by the rows that have drawn in everyone from JK Rowling and Stonewall to Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer.
For the first time, the two most senior people who have been running the Tavistock for more than a decade talk openly and at length about the judgements they had to make in an area of care where the medical research was not nearly as definitive as the voices in the culture war, where trans children themselves came with a range of different needs, where not only parents and teachers took very different views of medical treatment, but so did doctors and therapists too. You’ll hear from people who felt rescued by puberty blockers and medical care; others who felt the Tavistock’s approach was premature, prejudged and permanently damaging. And, you’ll find out as we did, how the politics of all this is playing out in the closure of the Tavistock and the new rules for the treatment of trans teenagers.
Our aim as a slow newsroom is to take the time to come to a better understanding of the complicated and contested issues in our world today. Over six episodes, The Tavistock sets out to answer a beguilingly simple question: is it right to prescribe puberty blockers to trans children? The first episode is in the Slow Newscast today.
To make sense of the World Cup – both the football and the politics – do read Tortoise Sports Editor Paul Hayward. And please join us, either in person and online, for two Tortoise Interviews with a couple of the world’s extraordinary people:
- Tomorrow at 6.30pm Michael Palin will be in our newsroom to chat about his latest adventure in Iraq.
- Then on Wednesday at 7.30pm, Larry Summers, the former US Treasury secretary, will be joining us online. At a time when so many of us are uncertain about the economic future, he has a knack for seeing things before others.
Have a very good week.
Allbest.
James Harding
Editor & Co-founder
