The Cass Review — Intro
The biggest review into healthcare for transgender youth
This is the introduction to my series looking at the Cass review into gender identify services for children in the UK. You can find the other parts here (I will update as I add sections):
Two weeks ago, the biggest review into healthcare for transgender youth came out. The Cass review, named for the head of the project Dr Hilary Cass, a leading pediatrician in the UK, was tasked with looking into the question of why there was a large increase in the number of children attending NHS gender clinics for treatment. Basically, the government wanted to know why more kids were coming in saying that they felt like their birth registered gender was off, and what the best thing to do for these kids might be.
The review was, in a word, extensive. The actual process of conducting the review took nearly four years, with some interim findings coming out in 2022 but most of the results only just coming out in the final report. The report itself is 388 pages long, including 15 pages of references and numerous appendices, and discusses many hundreds of scientific papers. In addition, as part of the review, the UK government commissioned a series of studies from York university which included 8 systematic reviews, an online survey, and…