I can’t unsee the admission in the hearing before Family Court judge Andrew Strum that 100% of children referrred to the Gender Clinic that prides itself on having a “multidisciplinary approach” were put on puberty blockers.
Not one was treated with what every one of these children need - proper mental health support.
In the past, the ABC would have done its job as our public broadcaster of a thorough journalist Investigation that exposed exactly what we all know through your amazing work. The ABC’s negligence is unbelievable, and leaves the excuse “we just didn’t know” open to the politicians who actually do know, but are so cowardly they won’t act. “Governing for all Australians, but not vulnerable children” apparently.
I hope the demise of the Greens millstone will prompt a resurgence of reliance on science and ethical medical practice rather than ann unscientific (but immensely profitable) ideology.
'100%' success rate", stated by the gender clinic, was the final red flag that had me back-pedal the heck away, and find whatever surreptitious means possible to keep smiling but get the heck out and save my kid from falling into their grubby clutches.
I work in public health.
No specialist service or any area of medicine, department of any hospital, has a 100% referral-to-pathway rate.
None.
If they do, it's VERY dodgy.
Examples-
Cancer specialty services are referred patients who are then screened/ assessed and sent away...'no cancer's.
Orthopaedic surgeons are referred patients who are assessed and deemed clear of concern...
Gynaecologists are referred patients found not to be pregnant,
Surgeons are referred patients who on assessment are cleared from needing surgery.
I could go on and on and on.
Even Accident and emergency... huge percentages of patients assessed to not have need for medical intervention.
Actually, now I think about it, I'm currently working in an offshoot of accident and emergency that is dependant on client numbers to create or continue funding...! Our staff constantly speak up against the pressure to accept inappropriate patients just to maintain the funding.
I think the qualification was that all the kids who wanted blockers & had willing parents got them.
I remember a gender clinician in the US being asked whether she had recommended surgery to any patients & she reacted with incomprehension as if it should’ve been obvious that it was what the patient wanted, not what the doc recommended that was decisive.
From how I was treated, I wonder about that qualification.
I was not a parent willing to enter any gender- change pathway. But I knew help of some sort was needed.
With huge misgivings I was told by trusted colleagues and medic friends that the clinic would separate 'the wheat from the chaff', and include assessments, consultation with multiple disciplines, guide my child to alternate conclusions if, when assessed, other factors were the cause of deeper distress.
The paediatrician and my child, with a mistake in communication between the paediatrician and myself (silently, over my child's head), referred to the clinic.
I rested in assurance of the paediatrician that the waiting list was 18 months plus, and his experience was 'watch and wait'.
But when the call came for the initial appointment almost 3 years later, my child had been in hospital for 3 months and was home recovering from severe physical injuries. So was in a very, very vulnerable space.
My reply to the date offered for appointment was the same I would have given the dentist- too unwell currently to manage this, can we postpone.
The reply was not the reply the dentist would have given, which caught me by surprise.
And then followed a serious of contacts that became more and more pressured. Some with false assurances that treatment for G distress would address other MH concerns. (I asked to postpone again as my A+ child was worried, wanting to catch up on almost a year of missed senior school, and I was becoming concerned about MH and being too vulnerable to accurately assess for GD.)
After that, it felt I was trying to outsmart the Gestapo. I'd see the clinic name and number come up in my phone when they called, and I'd be struck with visceral alarm, hide in a corner of the garage so family couldn't hear, and phone them back after I'd pulled myself together.
They gave up after two phone calls from the director of the service called me and had a long stern conversation where I asked loads of questions, answered a couple, and was told it was unlikely psych services would be available through the clinic, they did refer concurrently to private psychologists! I agreed to taking details of a 'recommended' psychologist and to follow up with the next call from admin to make an appointment with the clinic. 'Before it was too late.' My child was 16-17 at the time.
When the call for appointment came, I potponed again, said there was a love interest, was told to call back myself to make an appointment and to do it 'before 17th birthday' or gave dealing with adult services 'not so smooth or caring' as the kids clinic.
I never heard back from them.
I work in medical fields, and in public as well as private health, so I know the nuances underlying health practices. So much of it would shock outsiders. So much of it is insufficient, corrupt, harmful.
As well as the false premise given to me- by the admin person(!) calling to book an initial appointment- that treatment of 'gender' would address the other concerns I brought up (as genuine reasons to postpone), there was something else that stopped me...
I was coming from a 6hr away rural property, and my child was autistic. These were other reasons I brought up to explain why I was postponing. In attempting to get me to change my mind about postponing, in their reassurances, they inadvertently described their initial appointment.
This REALLY alarmed me, and told me these people did not understand paediatrics or 'the young person'
The initial appointment was I think 3hrs in two parts.
The FIRST (!!!) part was a GROUP appointment...
The second, private and one-to-one.
The group appointment...
(I could NOT believe this!!!!)
Multiple families and their kids all together with each other in one room, while there was a presentation and explanation of the process, and the clinic, I presume.
During this gathering there was time for parents to ask questions.
Hmmm....Ok- I wouldn't feel able to ask the specific questions I needed to ask within this setting. I mean I was very soundly of the opinion my child was not 'genuinely transgender, and had other issues to unpack that might be causing my kid to get sucked into the belief they wanted a trans persona, and I wanted some sensible clinicians to at least address this with my kid, and at best guide me to the best way out.
At this stage I was very openly supportive of the potential for 'true trans' to be a thing. I just was certain my kid wasn't one.
I know from my own training, that a group setting is not the place to raise issues about sensitive medical intricacies, especially when others present might have to be facing a difficult- even horrific- future dealing with their diagnoses.
In short, I didn't want to offend. I also didn't want to be kowtowed into softening my direct questions, which I would do in a private assessment.
,
From training and over 30 years experience dealing with medicine, paediatrics and patients in all disciplines and settings, that the following are vital to be aware of:
1) people are SO vulnerable walking into a hospital for any reason. Emotionally vulnerable, and therefore physically also at risk
2) the less people know, the more vulnerable they feel (parents) and therefore less likely to be able to take everything in.
3)Adults and more so children- need time to process, are less able to ask informed questions without time to go away, process, and re-enter the same setting later
3) children are HIGHLY impressionable.
4) A process that STARTS with pre-teaching, in a GROUP setting, introduces hugely complex and confounding factors.
5) A group setting dampens the ability for individuals to speak up. It quashes dissent.
(I would say most parents would suffer this through, in order to get to the 'one-to- one'. Keep their controversial questions for the safety of private consultation.
6) autism and trauma are silent in groups.
7)autistic individuals are often unable to process in group settings
8) autistic individuals often feel tremendous anxiety in group settings- feel unsafe in groups
9) children with autism or trauma in their backgrounds often are unable to advocate for themselves, even in comfortable environments with familiar loved ones. Even one- to- one, but much more so in group settings.
I imagined the colourful posters on the walls, the potential videos, music, kindly speakers, jolly cameraderie in describing the process. The same language I've used myself in treating children in the burns ward... gathering them in, warming them up, helping them feel safe, describing something painful by introducing it so as not to invite fear.
In this instance also giving them a sense of being part of something with import, with others who look like kindred spirits- potential new friends (unlike the unkindness and lonliness at school).
Starting with a group like this is highly unethical!
There's no way my kid would do anything in this setting except fall right in line. If I were to allow a taste of this, then veto it, my kid would respond as if I'd promised a trip to Disneyland then disallowed them from entering at the front door.
Without other influential adults backing me up, impressing the potential dangers within, my kid would rightly call me cruel and heartless. Any kid would be actively choosing to ruminate on and lay down as proof and fact, the 'hateful terf parent' rhetoric they'd read and maybe doubted (or not) previously.
This first part of the appointment would be almost impossible for even a dubious adult to be extricated from.
Kids who are not already 'true believers' would find it very uncomfortable to think they might be 'missing out' if they thought this wasn't for them.
Worried parents would be expertly placated.
Suspicious, informed parents like myself, might see the truth behind the facade, but it would be so, so exquisitely tricky to turn your child around after an initial appointment being a group session where the first meeting could be orchestrated and information fed as a 'one size fits all' presentation.
I even had to phone them back again later- twice... First to check I wasn't misunderstanding.
When I told the director of my hospital department in A and E, who had spent some time in a UK facility 20 years earlier, he said I was absolutely incorrect. That there was no way 'initial group appointment' meant multiple families and children as a group. He said I must have it wrong, that 'group assessment' would mean a group of multidisciplinary professionals would be assessing my child individually. I'd worked with such a team in paediatric multidisciplinary assessments for mild neurological impairment, in 3 days of one-to- one assessments with various specialists. As well as in other areas- medical wards, surgical teams, burns and rehab units.
Each assessing, and getting to discuss our findings together once a week, before making a group decision or diagnosis.
So the second phone call was to check yet again.
No.
I was not misunderstanding.
Initial assessment was 3 hrs (I think. May have been 4, but not more. ) And the first part of that time was families together, being described the process. Time for questions.
Highly unethical. Bordering on pre-programming and abuse of power. To me this is how cults collect their disciples.
So then, the one- to- one section- I find out it's mostly no parents.
So
No.
It's wrong.
And so I wonder about the qualifier you mention, Bernard.
But I also am standing in the 'parent' field with this, rather than being professional.
So excuse the long winded reply.
I decided part- way through I'd put ALL the details down while writing this, in order to send elsewhere.
Thanks for your diligence and thorough approach, as always.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) Position:
The AMA supports gender-affirming care for children and young people, advocating for access to puberty blockers and hormone therapies, as well as gender affirmation surgery.
. . . . The AMA has again lost the plot in the pursuit of wokeness; It’s not difficult to understand why less than 30% of Australian doctors are members of the AMA
I would think that if Media Watch is criticising you , Bernard then that is a badge of honour. Especially if it is Paul Barry.
So much politics in this issue rather than evidence and science. To say that patient lead the action taken is interesting. It doesn’t happen in any other area of medical intervention.
These days I am very sceptical and distrustful of the health service. I am fully intending to stay away from doctors unless absolutely necessary.
Is it worth my writing to ABC media watch to point out they are missing the boat on this issue? (I am still anonymous, still carefully breathing, with fingers crossed, the releif of having desistence in our family.
It will fall on deaf ears. On the whole writing to theirABC is a fruitless task. They hardly ever admit a mistake and if they do they do nothing. I just work on the premise that whatever they say is wrong.
My 86 yr old father gave up on the ABC about 10 years ago, with disgust. Because of who he is, I looked closer at it then, and now, the obvious idiocy infiltrating my most respected programs has finally driven me away.
Brilliant work as usual, Bernard.
I can’t unsee the admission in the hearing before Family Court judge Andrew Strum that 100% of children referrred to the Gender Clinic that prides itself on having a “multidisciplinary approach” were put on puberty blockers.
Not one was treated with what every one of these children need - proper mental health support.
In the past, the ABC would have done its job as our public broadcaster of a thorough journalist Investigation that exposed exactly what we all know through your amazing work. The ABC’s negligence is unbelievable, and leaves the excuse “we just didn’t know” open to the politicians who actually do know, but are so cowardly they won’t act. “Governing for all Australians, but not vulnerable children” apparently.
I hope the demise of the Greens millstone will prompt a resurgence of reliance on science and ethical medical practice rather than ann unscientific (but immensely profitable) ideology.
Thanks Liz. They can’t see the story through the fog of identity politics. B
'100%' success rate", stated by the gender clinic, was the final red flag that had me back-pedal the heck away, and find whatever surreptitious means possible to keep smiling but get the heck out and save my kid from falling into their grubby clutches.
I work in public health.
No specialist service or any area of medicine, department of any hospital, has a 100% referral-to-pathway rate.
None.
If they do, it's VERY dodgy.
Examples-
Cancer specialty services are referred patients who are then screened/ assessed and sent away...'no cancer's.
Orthopaedic surgeons are referred patients who are assessed and deemed clear of concern...
Gynaecologists are referred patients found not to be pregnant,
Surgeons are referred patients who on assessment are cleared from needing surgery.
I could go on and on and on.
Even Accident and emergency... huge percentages of patients assessed to not have need for medical intervention.
Actually, now I think about it, I'm currently working in an offshoot of accident and emergency that is dependant on client numbers to create or continue funding...! Our staff constantly speak up against the pressure to accept inappropriate patients just to maintain the funding.
Hmmmm.....
100% acceptance itself is VERY dodgy
I think the qualification was that all the kids who wanted blockers & had willing parents got them.
I remember a gender clinician in the US being asked whether she had recommended surgery to any patients & she reacted with incomprehension as if it should’ve been obvious that it was what the patient wanted, not what the doc recommended that was decisive.
From how I was treated, I wonder about that qualification.
I was not a parent willing to enter any gender- change pathway. But I knew help of some sort was needed.
With huge misgivings I was told by trusted colleagues and medic friends that the clinic would separate 'the wheat from the chaff', and include assessments, consultation with multiple disciplines, guide my child to alternate conclusions if, when assessed, other factors were the cause of deeper distress.
The paediatrician and my child, with a mistake in communication between the paediatrician and myself (silently, over my child's head), referred to the clinic.
I rested in assurance of the paediatrician that the waiting list was 18 months plus, and his experience was 'watch and wait'.
But when the call came for the initial appointment almost 3 years later, my child had been in hospital for 3 months and was home recovering from severe physical injuries. So was in a very, very vulnerable space.
My reply to the date offered for appointment was the same I would have given the dentist- too unwell currently to manage this, can we postpone.
The reply was not the reply the dentist would have given, which caught me by surprise.
And then followed a serious of contacts that became more and more pressured. Some with false assurances that treatment for G distress would address other MH concerns. (I asked to postpone again as my A+ child was worried, wanting to catch up on almost a year of missed senior school, and I was becoming concerned about MH and being too vulnerable to accurately assess for GD.)
After that, it felt I was trying to outsmart the Gestapo. I'd see the clinic name and number come up in my phone when they called, and I'd be struck with visceral alarm, hide in a corner of the garage so family couldn't hear, and phone them back after I'd pulled myself together.
They gave up after two phone calls from the director of the service called me and had a long stern conversation where I asked loads of questions, answered a couple, and was told it was unlikely psych services would be available through the clinic, they did refer concurrently to private psychologists! I agreed to taking details of a 'recommended' psychologist and to follow up with the next call from admin to make an appointment with the clinic. 'Before it was too late.' My child was 16-17 at the time.
When the call for appointment came, I potponed again, said there was a love interest, was told to call back myself to make an appointment and to do it 'before 17th birthday' or gave dealing with adult services 'not so smooth or caring' as the kids clinic.
I never heard back from them.
I work in medical fields, and in public as well as private health, so I know the nuances underlying health practices. So much of it would shock outsiders. So much of it is insufficient, corrupt, harmful.
As well as the false premise given to me- by the admin person(!) calling to book an initial appointment- that treatment of 'gender' would address the other concerns I brought up (as genuine reasons to postpone), there was something else that stopped me...
I was coming from a 6hr away rural property, and my child was autistic. These were other reasons I brought up to explain why I was postponing. In attempting to get me to change my mind about postponing, in their reassurances, they inadvertently described their initial appointment.
This REALLY alarmed me, and told me these people did not understand paediatrics or 'the young person'
The initial appointment was I think 3hrs in two parts.
The FIRST (!!!) part was a GROUP appointment...
The second, private and one-to-one.
The group appointment...
(I could NOT believe this!!!!)
Multiple families and their kids all together with each other in one room, while there was a presentation and explanation of the process, and the clinic, I presume.
During this gathering there was time for parents to ask questions.
Hmmm....Ok- I wouldn't feel able to ask the specific questions I needed to ask within this setting. I mean I was very soundly of the opinion my child was not 'genuinely transgender, and had other issues to unpack that might be causing my kid to get sucked into the belief they wanted a trans persona, and I wanted some sensible clinicians to at least address this with my kid, and at best guide me to the best way out.
At this stage I was very openly supportive of the potential for 'true trans' to be a thing. I just was certain my kid wasn't one.
I know from my own training, that a group setting is not the place to raise issues about sensitive medical intricacies, especially when others present might have to be facing a difficult- even horrific- future dealing with their diagnoses.
In short, I didn't want to offend. I also didn't want to be kowtowed into softening my direct questions, which I would do in a private assessment.
,
From training and over 30 years experience dealing with medicine, paediatrics and patients in all disciplines and settings, that the following are vital to be aware of:
1) people are SO vulnerable walking into a hospital for any reason. Emotionally vulnerable, and therefore physically also at risk
2) the less people know, the more vulnerable they feel (parents) and therefore less likely to be able to take everything in.
3)Adults and more so children- need time to process, are less able to ask informed questions without time to go away, process, and re-enter the same setting later
3) children are HIGHLY impressionable.
4) A process that STARTS with pre-teaching, in a GROUP setting, introduces hugely complex and confounding factors.
5) A group setting dampens the ability for individuals to speak up. It quashes dissent.
(I would say most parents would suffer this through, in order to get to the 'one-to- one'. Keep their controversial questions for the safety of private consultation.
6) autism and trauma are silent in groups.
7)autistic individuals are often unable to process in group settings
8) autistic individuals often feel tremendous anxiety in group settings- feel unsafe in groups
9) children with autism or trauma in their backgrounds often are unable to advocate for themselves, even in comfortable environments with familiar loved ones. Even one- to- one, but much more so in group settings.
I imagined the colourful posters on the walls, the potential videos, music, kindly speakers, jolly cameraderie in describing the process. The same language I've used myself in treating children in the burns ward... gathering them in, warming them up, helping them feel safe, describing something painful by introducing it so as not to invite fear.
In this instance also giving them a sense of being part of something with import, with others who look like kindred spirits- potential new friends (unlike the unkindness and lonliness at school).
Starting with a group like this is highly unethical!
There's no way my kid would do anything in this setting except fall right in line. If I were to allow a taste of this, then veto it, my kid would respond as if I'd promised a trip to Disneyland then disallowed them from entering at the front door.
Without other influential adults backing me up, impressing the potential dangers within, my kid would rightly call me cruel and heartless. Any kid would be actively choosing to ruminate on and lay down as proof and fact, the 'hateful terf parent' rhetoric they'd read and maybe doubted (or not) previously.
This first part of the appointment would be almost impossible for even a dubious adult to be extricated from.
Kids who are not already 'true believers' would find it very uncomfortable to think they might be 'missing out' if they thought this wasn't for them.
Worried parents would be expertly placated.
Suspicious, informed parents like myself, might see the truth behind the facade, but it would be so, so exquisitely tricky to turn your child around after an initial appointment being a group session where the first meeting could be orchestrated and information fed as a 'one size fits all' presentation.
I even had to phone them back again later- twice... First to check I wasn't misunderstanding.
When I told the director of my hospital department in A and E, who had spent some time in a UK facility 20 years earlier, he said I was absolutely incorrect. That there was no way 'initial group appointment' meant multiple families and children as a group. He said I must have it wrong, that 'group assessment' would mean a group of multidisciplinary professionals would be assessing my child individually. I'd worked with such a team in paediatric multidisciplinary assessments for mild neurological impairment, in 3 days of one-to- one assessments with various specialists. As well as in other areas- medical wards, surgical teams, burns and rehab units.
Each assessing, and getting to discuss our findings together once a week, before making a group decision or diagnosis.
So the second phone call was to check yet again.
No.
I was not misunderstanding.
Initial assessment was 3 hrs (I think. May have been 4, but not more. ) And the first part of that time was families together, being described the process. Time for questions.
Highly unethical. Bordering on pre-programming and abuse of power. To me this is how cults collect their disciples.
So then, the one- to- one section- I find out it's mostly no parents.
So
No.
It's wrong.
And so I wonder about the qualifier you mention, Bernard.
But I also am standing in the 'parent' field with this, rather than being professional.
So excuse the long winded reply.
I decided part- way through I'd put ALL the details down while writing this, in order to send elsewhere.
Thanks for your diligence and thorough approach, as always.
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) Position:
The AMA supports gender-affirming care for children and young people, advocating for access to puberty blockers and hormone therapies, as well as gender affirmation surgery.
. . . . The AMA has again lost the plot in the pursuit of wokeness; It’s not difficult to understand why less than 30% of Australian doctors are members of the AMA
Yes, a lot of subtle back-peddling with a lot left to go.
I reference a nonsensical comment in the ABC website of May 24th 2021, those heady days prior to some serious questions being asked of RCH
“Dr Michelle Telfer saving the lives of hundreds, even thousands of children – without ‘ever picking up a scalpel or treating a disease
I would think that if Media Watch is criticising you , Bernard then that is a badge of honour. Especially if it is Paul Barry.
So much politics in this issue rather than evidence and science. To say that patient lead the action taken is interesting. It doesn’t happen in any other area of medical intervention.
These days I am very sceptical and distrustful of the health service. I am fully intending to stay away from doctors unless absolutely necessary.
Is it worth my writing to ABC media watch to point out they are missing the boat on this issue? (I am still anonymous, still carefully breathing, with fingers crossed, the releif of having desistence in our family.
I've always respected this show and Paul Barry.
This upsets me a lot!
Worth trying. My expectations would be low. B
It will fall on deaf ears. On the whole writing to theirABC is a fruitless task. They hardly ever admit a mistake and if they do they do nothing. I just work on the premise that whatever they say is wrong.
My 86 yr old father gave up on the ABC about 10 years ago, with disgust. Because of who he is, I looked closer at it then, and now, the obvious idiocy infiltrating my most respected programs has finally driven me away.
I'm sad to agree with you.
It is very sad. We grew up with their mANC when it was our ABC. It a mere shadow of itself and not fit for purpose these days.