BPS responds to final Cass Review report

The final report from the Cass Review, published today, makes a series of recommendations regarding the future delivery of gender identity services for children and young people.

With so many children, young people and their families waiting years for assessment and care, the BPS fully supports the report's primary focus of expanding service capacity across the country. 

The BPS also acknowledges that while psychological therapies will continue to have an incredibly important role to play in the new services, more needs to be done to assess the effectiveness of these psychological interventions.

Responding to the report, Dr Roman Raczka, President-Elect of the BPS, said:

"We want to commend Dr Hilary Cass for her thorough and sensitive review into an area that is highly complex and controversial to many. All too often, the way this controversy has played out in public has been damaging to the very children, young people and families desperately seeking help. We wholeheartedly join Dr Cass's call for an end to the deeply concerning, public bullying and vilification of professionals working in this challenging area.

"The prescribing of puberty blockers has received a great deal of focus both in wider discussions about gender, and within the report itself. We agree with Dr Cass that the controversy around this issue has sometimes taken focus away from the important role of psychological interventions in gender services to support young people and their families. We agree that it's vital to create a sound evidence base and better understanding of the long-term effects of puberty blockers and the need for more data in this area to help young people make informed decisions about their treatment and to support the clinicians providing care and treatment.

"Dr Cass and her team have produced a thought-provoking, detailed and wide-ranging list of recommendations, which will have implications for all professionals working with gender-questioning children and young people. It will take time to carefully review and respond to the whole report, but I am sure that psychology, as a profession, will reflect and learn lessons from the review, its findings and recommendations. 

"We warmly welcome the recommendation to establish a consortium of relevant professional bodies to identify gaps in professional training and develop training materials to upskill the workforce. As the body that accredits professional training courses for psychologists and the wider psychological workforce in the UK, the BPS looks forward to contributing to this important work as it develops."

Recognising the importance of supporting professionals working with children and young people around gender issues, the BPS recently launched recruitment for a Children, Young People and Gender workstream to ensure that a strong evidence base is at the heart of these conversations.