Vic Tanner Davy said that Liberate would never advise such ‘risky’ practice, which was recently highlighted by the suicide of a transgender teen in Cambridgeshire who had resorted to a £30-a-month hormone treatment from unregulated online doctors after facing a six-year wait for help on the NHS.
Currently Islanders are referred to one of the UK’s gender identity clinics and it can take many years before a person has their diagnosis signed off ready to begin hormone therapy.
They then face a further wait if they want surgery.
However, Liberate – which says there has been an increase in the number of Islanders, particularly young people, questioning their gender – has proposed a new treatment pathway to the Health Department that they say could help to speed up the process for patients and reduce pressure on the NHS system.
Under the proposals, more people would be seen locally by specially trained experts, not necessarily those within the mental-health service as gender dysphoria alone is no longer considered to be a mental-health problem.
Mr Tanner Davy, who told a Scrutiny hearing in January about the proposals, said there had been a ‘small amount of progress’ in the past six months.
‘We have met with a cross-disciplinary working party organised by the Health Department,’ he said. ‘We have yet to meet [Health Minister] Deputy Richard Renouf as our initial meeting had to be postponed. We were encouraged by the positive response of the working party to our submission to the Scrutiny panel and we are looking forward to further meetings with them to discuss improving the pathway to care for transgender Islanders.
‘From these discussions and engaging with the trans community, it is hoped that amendments will be made to the pathway so that most of the care for transgender Islanders will be delivered in Jersey in future with much reduced waiting times.’
He added that the story of 18-year-old Jayden Lowe, who was buying drugs over the internet from a clinic said to have treated children as young as 12, highlighted the impact that long waiting times could have on some people.
‘I suspect that there may be people in Jersey who, due to the extraordinarily long waiting times to access treatment, are resorting to the risky practice of purchasing hormones from the internet. This is not something we would ever advise people to do because of the risks involved, although we fully understand the frustration that might push someone to take such a course of action.
‘Liberate has, in the past, had some contact from a parent concerned that their son/daughter might be going to take this action. We have not had similar concerns raised recently and this may be because we know that some GPs in Jersey are prepared to start hormone-therapy treatment before a client has had their gender identity clinic appointment in the UK, in order to alleviate the suffering they are seeing in their patient.’
