Northern Ireland health minister funds gender identity services to prevent ‘waiting-list cliff edge’
Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has allocated funding towards a gender identity services clinic. (Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Health Minister Mike Nesbitt has allocated funding towards a gender identity services clinic. (Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)
Northern Ireland’s health minister has allocated more than £800,000 (about $1 million) for gender-affirming care.
Mike Nesbitt, who is also the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, said adult and youth services at Belfast’s Brackenburn Clinic were being combined to prevent a “waiting-list cliff edge” for young people once they turn 18.
The Belfast Health Trust, which runs the clinic, told the BBC there were 1,163 adults and 45 children and young people on the waiting list. The longest wait for an adult to be seen was more than seven years, compared with a target time of 13 weeks, Vice reported.
A spokesperson for The Rainbow Project, an LGBTQ+ charity in Northern Ireland, said that the clinic had been operating “in an extremely limited capacity” for the past seven years because of staffing and funding shortfalls.
Nesbitt’s decision to allocate extra money has come in for criticism from Democratic Unionist Party and Traditional Unionist Voice politicians, as well as from some of his own Northern Ireland Assembly members.
Nesbitt defended the policy by saying it would ensure Northern Ireland was a part of the UK-wide ban on puberty blockers for those under the age of 18. “It was made clear to me this would not happen unless we put some money [into reviving] the gender identity clinic, which was basically lying dormant through a lack of funding,” he added.
There were also concerns about trans people accessing the medication through “international providers”, he claimed.
“There is an example of a doctor who is Spanish working out of Romania, prescribing through Singapore. We have no control over the safety of that operation so we decided to put some money into the gender identity service.”
The Brackenburn Clinic would be putting a “huge emphasis on psychological and psychiatric help”.
The Rainbow Project “cautiously welcomed” the investment, and called for “further engagement with trans communities to ensure a quality of care”.
Recent research has shown that the ban on puberty blockers was having “serious adverse effects” on transgender youngsters.
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