Today, the Scottish Government has published their three year strategic action framework for transforming gender identity services. Some of the main things the framework commits to do are:

•  provide three years of centralised crisis intervention funding to gender identity services, including 2 million pounds in the first year. The funding can be used in three ways:
  • Piloting new services that provide gender identity services, using new models of service delivery
  • Supporting existing gender identity clinics to reduce their waiting times
  • Providing support to people currently on the waiting list
• Set up a National Gender Identity Healthcare Reference Group in early 2022, which will be responsible for ensuring that commitments in the framework happen
• Develop national standards for gender identity services
• Provide funding for research into trans people’s long term health outcomes
• Bring waiting times in-line with national waiting times standards

Our Manager Vic had this to say about the publication of the framework:

“We warmly welcome this strategic action framework, which alongside crisis funding also provides the foundations for making long lasting, significant change to gender identity healthcare that is so desperately needed. Trans people deserve to live happy, healthy lives, and to have access to the healthcare we need to make this possible. We look forward to contributing to work to transform these services, and in particular to the Scottish Government ensuring that trans people truly are at the heart of decisions made to do so – something that is absolutely crucial to making sure that this framework delivers on its aims.”

You can read the framework at the Scottish Government website here: https://www.gov.scot/news/supporting-nhs-gender-identity-services/