The reality of how a clinical assessment actually works
Dr Helen Webberley on LBC: trans healthcare, with Tom Swarbrick, LBC
Doctors who work in gender-affirming care just take a child's word for it and start treatment on the spot. A child says they're trans, and the medication follows, with no proper assessment, no time, and no clinical judgement involved.
What I was pushing back on there is a caricature so extreme it would be funny if it weren't doing real harm. Nobody walks through a door and gets injected with anything. The assessment process is careful, it takes time, and it involves the child, their family, and clinicians who are thinking hard about what this particular person needs. I've spent years in this work, and I have never met a practitioner who operates the way the critics describe. The irony is that the people making this claim rarely engage with what the process actually looks like, because if they did, the argument would fall apart.
More from this conversation
