by Clare Dyer

The High Court in London has been asked to give the go ahead for a challenge to the legality of NHS guidelines on administering hormone blocking drugs to children at the UK’s only specialist NHS service for young people seeking gender reassignment.

Susan Evans, a former psychiatric nurse at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust’s gender identity development service (GIDS), and “Mrs A,” the mother of a 15 year old girl with autism who is on the service’s waiting list, have filed papers asking for a judicial review of the guidelines. They argue that the guidelines are unlawful because children cannot give informed consent to the use of puberty blockers.

The claimants have raised more than £35 000 (€41 000; $46 000) so far on the CrowdJustice website to fund the legal challenge. Mrs A said on the website that she was worried that “no one (let alone my daughter) understands the risks and therefore cannot ensure informed consent is obtained.”

Evans wrote on the website, “The alarm bells began ringing for me when a colleague at the weekly team clinical meeting said that they had seen a young person four times and they were now recommending them for a referral to the endocrinology department to commence hormone therapy.” Read more via BMJ