A group of parents and carers whose children received gender-affirming care through the WellBN Practice in Surrey and Sussex have issued a formal statement condemning the way the local Integrated Care Board has handled its investigation into prescribing at that practice. Their children's treatment is being withdrawn. Their voices deserve to be heard.
The statement, in their own words
I want to quote this directly, because these are not my words to paraphrase. This is the voice of parents who have watched their children thrive, and who are now watching that care be taken away.
"We are a group of parents and carers whose children have been directly affected by the Surrey and Sussex Integrated Care Board's investigation into prescribing at WellBN Practice.
For the past year our children have lived with uncertainty about whether treatment that they, and we as parents and carers, regard as essential to their wellbeing and mental health would be withdrawn. Gender affirming care is life-changing and many of us have seen our children thrive under the care of WellBN. Since the investigation began, many have experienced significant anxiety, distress and disruption to their education and daily lives. Sussex and Surrey ICB have done little to mitigate that harm.
We are deeply concerned that families have had little meaningful involvement in a process that will have profound consequences for our children. Parents did not have the opportunity to consent to access to their child's records, and all records were accessed regardless, even for those who explicitly refused access. Communication from the ICB has been limited and inconsistent throughout, and there has been no direct engagement with the children, young people and families whose lives will be most affected by these decisions.
We are also concerned that many reports contain factual inaccuracies, yet families have had no opportunity to correct the record before decisions about care have been made. The report finds no evidence of 'actual harm', only 'potential harm'. Our families have experienced great harm under the investigation, and our children will go onto experience actual harm as the outcomes are enacted.
For most children under 16, the outcome is the withdrawal of treatment and involuntary detransition. For those children who are thriving with gender affirming care, taking that away from them is likely to cause terrible harm, and potentially lead to a further deterioration in the mental health of many. More than one child has said 'I will kill myself if they make me go through the wrong puberty'. We reject any suggestion that this is a routine administrative change. The consequences for affected young people and their families are significant and potentially life-altering.
We call on the ICB to pause the withdrawal of treatment until an independent clinical review can be conducted and every affected child has received an individual clinical review, families and treating clinicians have been properly consulted, and decisions are based on accurate and complete information."
What this actually means for these children
There is a tendency in reporting on these cases to talk about "prescribing concerns" and "safeguarding processes" as though they are administrative matters handled at a comfortable distance from real people. They are not. Behind every case number is a child who woke up this morning and went to school, and who now lives under the knowledge that their body may be taken out of their own hands.
Trans girls who are denied the chance to pause or redirect their puberty will go through a male puberty. That is not a neutral outcome. It means changes to their voice, their face, their body that will stay with them for the rest of their lives, making it harder or impossible to live without being identifiable as trans to strangers, colleagues, and people who may not be safe. The psychological harm of that is not theoretical: it is documented, it is severe, and it is entirely avoidable.
Trans boys who are forced through a female puberty face a different but equally serious set of harms. The distress of developing a body that feels profoundly wrong, the monthly reminder of it, the social and psychological weight of it, is well evidenced in the research. These young people told their doctors, their parents, and anyone who would listen who they were. And this is the system's answer.
The parents' statement records that more than one child said they would kill themselves rather than go through the wrong puberty. I have heard words like these from young people throughout my career. They are not drama. They are not manipulation. They are children telling the truth about how serious this is, and they deserve to be believed.
The misinformation problem
The doctors at WellBN were doing their jobs. They were prescribing gender-affirming care in line with current clinical understanding, responding to the needs of children and families who came to them because the NHS waiting list had left them with nowhere else to go. The investigation does not find evidence of actual harm. It finds "potential harm", a framing that would justify withdrawing almost any medical treatment if applied consistently.
There is a great deal of misinformation circulating about gender-affirming care for young people, much of it given an air of authority by citing the Cass Review, which has been widely discredited internationally. That review has been rebutted in detail by gender medicine specialists, and its methodology has been criticised by researchers across Europe and North America. Yet its conclusions continue to be used to justify restricting care that was already hard to access and is now, for these children, being removed entirely.
When a system uses "potential harm" to justify taking away treatment from children who are thriving, while ignoring the documented, predictable, irreversible harm of doing so, it is not acting in the interests of those children. It is acting in the interests of a political climate.
This is a pattern, not an isolated case
What happened at WellBN is not unique. Since the ban on private prescribing of puberty blockers for trans young people and the effective closure of NHS pathways, families across the UK have been left without options. The small number of clinicians willing to work in this area have come under intense scrutiny. The message being sent to those clinicians is clear: prescribe gender-affirming care and you will be investigated. The message being sent to trans young people is equally clear, and far crueller.
The parents calling for an independent clinical review, for individual assessments, for families to be properly consulted before decisions are made, are asking for basic standards of care. The fact that those standards were not met before treatment was withdrawn tells you something important about how seriously this system takes the welfare of trans children.
Three things you can do right now
If you are reading this and you want to do something, here is where to start.
First, share this statement. The parents who wrote it did so because they want these words in the world. Share it with your MP, your local councillor, your professional network, your social media. The more people who read it in their own words, the harder it is to dismiss as a fringe concern.
Second, write to your MP and ask them specifically what the government is doing to ensure that trans young people have access to gender-affirming care while NHS services remain unavailable. Ask them whether they believe that a child thriving on treatment should have that treatment withdrawn without an individual clinical review. Make them answer the question.
Third, support the organisations doing legal and advocacy work to protect trans young people's rights to healthcare. Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence, and the Good Law Project have all taken on work in this space. Your donations fund the capacity to fight cases like this one.
The persecution of trans youth has to stop. These are children. Their parents are fighting for them with everything they have. The least the rest of us can do is listen.
If there is a topic that you would like me to cover, just let Sammy know.
Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about trans healthcare, rights, and the lives of trans people and their families.