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Fifteen years ago I was appointed to chair a Department of Health working group to produce the NHSâs first written guidance for NHS staff, doctors, families and actual trans people about trans topics â a subject where nothing had existed before. The effort took years and ..
..involved commissioning subject experts to not only write the materials (tackling all the gaps we identified) but also to critically read and edit them. Similar work took place in parallel committees to address info gaps for other diversity groups
The culmination of that programme was a 100 page policy book, âTrans: A Practical Guide for the NHSâ which I ended up writing myself, with a picture of me on the front because the NHS photo library predictably had no stock photos of trans people. Getting it printed was no walk..
..in the park because, rightly, every statement and reference was checked over for validity. We were, after all, publishing policy for how to work with trans people as not only patients but as employees, next of kin and other stakeholders. By the end of 2008 all these resources..
..were published both in print and online, eagerly gobbled up by a world gasping for official guidance. Sadly all of this was buried from view in the first week that the Tory coalition government took power in the spring of 2010. The indexes and documents were still online but..
..you couldnât reach them unless you already knew exactly what you were looking for. By this time Iâd finished that kind of work as an stakeholder-advisor. I went on to programme manage the work of an equality team for an NHS region and had a hand in implementing the..
..forerunner of what later emerged as the (watered down) NHS Equality Delivery System. Replacing the disappeared work fell to others in a new and more digital-first environment. But to learn how the fundamental point of publishing sound evidence-based advice in this area has..
..been subverted by dishonest actors, using false manufactured fake-facts from the hate complex of US right wing evangelicals absolutely breaks my heart. NHS managers obviously didnât WRITE the lies that came to infect official advice about hormone blockers on their website..
..but something clearly went very wrong with the due diligence that publishing for a national health system demands. This undermines trust across the board in what you can believe when it appears under the NHS and Department of Health brands online. Itâs a disgrace.
