UPDATE BASED ON THE NOTES OF THE MEETING OF THE PARLIAMENTARY FORUM ON TRANSSEXUALISM

Thursday 28 February 2002

 
  1. Death Certificates Update

    Lynne Jones received a reply from the Registrar General, Len Cook which stated that he was happy to arrange for clarification of the guidance issued to registrars. This offer has been accepted and the Forum has asked for the opportunity to comment before this is circulated. A Forum member recently took up the issue with the Registrar in Oxford and was not given the correct information and it was agreed that there is clearly a need for guidance for registrars.
  2. Police Guidelines

    Essex Police are still in the process of producing Guidelines. They have been shared with other forces including Staffordshire and there has been good feedback from them. Once the Essex guidelines are agreed, Forum members will ask their local Chief Constables if they will adopt similar policies.
  3. Academic Studies and Good Practice

    Responses from deans on medical schools’ teaching material


    There had been a good response in terms of numbers but not quality from deans to a letter from Lynne Jones about their teaching material. Some contained discriminatory material. The Forum will produce a detailed report highlighting both good and bad practice with suggestions for improvements.

    Royal Society of Medicine Conference on 16 April – discussion of Royal College of Psychiatrists guidelines for Health Authorities

    Draft Standards of Care (SoC) being produced by a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists are to be discussed at a conference being hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine. There was agreement at the Forum that the draft SoC needed to be circulated to participants at the RSM meeting in advance of 16 April in order for the meeting to be meaningful. The draft from the Royal College of Psychiatrists was distributed on 9 April.

    The Forum agreed that it would be necessary to have considerable flexibility in approaches to treatment to meet the needs of the individual patient. To maximise the success of treatments, patients should play a major role in determining the nature and timing of their own treatments. The principle of informed consent was crucial. At the appropriate stage of treatment, individuals needed to be offered choices about their treatment and to be well-informed, in a non-threatening way, about the possible consequences of those choices.

    It was agreed that it would be important that an adult SoC should be coherent with the existing SoC for children and adolescents, and that it should build on and improve the Harry Benjamin SoC.

    The Forum and trans groups will be represented at the discussion of the RCPcych draft at the RSM meeting on 16 April. In addition to commenting on the draft of the SoC the Forum representative will speak on the parameters that need to be kept in mind when developing a SoC: the Department of Health policy statements that must be adhered to; the nature of the trans community, the way it has become articulate, educated and professionalised in the last ten years, the opportunity that exists to remove unsatisfactory abusive medical practice that has been inherited from past 'treatment' of lesbians and gay men; and the kind of processes of consultation that would be appropriate to developing a SoC. It was generally recognised that there were complex issues to be considered but it was hoped that some of these would begin to be addressed in writing in the next draft of the Forum's Health Authority Guidelines which would feed into the development of the SoC. It would be in the interests of all concerned for high quality medical care to be available to trans people and there was both a development task and an educational task to be undertaken.

    In conclusion, Lynne Jones commented that the opportunity for discussion of the draft guidelines from the RCPsych at the RSM conference should be viewed by the Forum in a positive light as a means of making progress on good practice guidelines. We should use our influence to ensure an effective process. It is important that the two sets of guidelines are coming from the same set of presumptions.

    Forum Guidance to Health Authorities on the treatment of Trans-people

    It was agreed that in view of the RSM process our guidelines should seek to inform the "official" version.

    The Forum are continuing to work on Guidance to Health Authorities on the treatment of trans-people.
  4. Campaigning to take forward the Departmental Working Group Report (including EDM 185 and 10 Minute Rule Bill

    It was noted that badgering individual MPs to sign the EDM had yielded some successes – currently there are 56 signatories (4 Tories, 38 Lab, 10 Lib Dem, 3 Plaid Cymru, 1 Independent). It would be good to get more Tories if possible.

    The Forum is working on the drafting of a 10 Minute Rule Bill as a model for future legislative change (10 Minute Rule Bills rarely become law but the process is an opportunity of raising an issue in Parliament).

    Successes in cases currently before the courts would probably be the best way of forcing the Government to act on the birth certificate issue. Unfortunately, the articles in the Independent in January, that raised people’s hopes of imminent legislation, were without foundation but pressure would continue to be put on ministers to deliver the changes implied in the report of the Interdepartmental Working Group.
  5. Date of Next Meeting: 23 May 2002

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